Month: September 2015

On the Same Page Literary Festival

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I attended the On the Same Page Literary Festival in West Jefferson, North Carolina last Friday. In my last post I blogged about getting to hear author Angela Davis-Gardner speak.

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When I visit a town to participate in an event to sell or publicize my vintage postcard book, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, I try to patronize the local businesses. I always look for a locally-owned and -operated restaurant. On Friday I enjoyed lunch at the historic Tavern Hotel Restaurant in West Jefferson. The former hotel is pictured above.

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Later that afternoon I participated in the festival’s book fair. A dozen authors and Natalie Foreman, Associate Editor with McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers, took part in the fair. I got to speak briefly with Ms. Foreman about an idea I have for a nonfiction book. More on that later, if it materializes. I had copies of my vintage postcard book, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, available for  sale.

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I shared a table at the fair with author Maryrose Carroll. We had interesting conversation about writing, the benefits of being in a local writers group, self-publishing, and politics. Ms. Carroll was selling and signing her book, Beats Me: Love, Poetry, Censorship from Chicago to Appalachia. That’s Maryrose Carroll and me chatting at our table in the photo below.

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I sent a query letter to a publishing house today. I’ll keep you posted.

Angela Davis-Gardner, Author

I had the pleasure of hearing Angela Davis-Gardner, Author, speak at the 2015 Ashe County On the Same Page Book Festival in West Jefferson, NC on September 18, 2015. A Distinguished Professor Emerita at North Carolina State University, Ms. Davis-Gardner lives in Raleigh, NC. She spoke, took questions from the audience, and signed books at the Ashe County Public Library.

Author Angela Davis-Gardner, signing one of her novels for Marie Morrison
Author Angela Davis-Gardner, signing one of her novels for Marie Morrison

Ms. Davis-Gardner has won acclaim for her four novels. Butterfly’s Child is her imaginings about the life of the son of Madama Butterfly and Lt. Pinkerton after Madama Butterfly committed suicide.

Plum Wine, is set in 1960s Japan. Ms. Davis-Gardner drew heavily from her first-hand knowledge of that country in which she lived while in her twenties.

Forms of Shelter follows a piedmont North Carolina dysfunctional family.

Felice is the story of a girl who grew up in a convent in Nova Scotia in the 1920s after her parents drowned in a shipwreck.

Having written Plum Wine and Felice out of family stories with which she grew up, Ms. Davis-Gardner was shocked to recently learn that her family lore was not altogether true. It was fascinating to hear her tell those stories and then reveal the truth. Hers is quite an amazing story.

I look forward to reading all four of Angela Davis-Gardner’s novels!

The Breaking Point by Jefferson Bass

The Breaking Point, by Jefferson Bass is one of those books you eagerly devour because you want to know how it ends; however, you don’t want to finish it because there isn’t another Jefferson Bass book to read until the next one is published.

If you aren’t familiar with the writing team of Jon Jefferson and Dr. Bill Bass, please add them to your reading list. Dr. Bass is a world-renowned forensic anthropologist. He created the Anthropology Research Facility at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. It is popularly called the Body Farm. Dr. Bass teamed up with writer Jon Jefferson to write a Body Farm series of novels. The novels explore the many ways in which a forensic anthropologist can find evidence in a dead body that will help solve the mystery of how that person died or who that person was. It sounds gruesome, but it really is not. The books touch on the details of such work, but only enough to educate the reader and give the books credence.

Although each book in the Body Farm Novel series can be read as a stand-alone, I recommend that you read the series in chronological order. Particularly, one should read Cut to the Bone (released in 2013) before reading The Breaking Point. There is a spoiler in The Breaking Point that will take some of the edge off the suspense in Cut to the Bone, if you haven’t read it.

Typical of the Jefferson Bass Body Farm novels, The Breaking Point takes the reader down a path with countless twists and turns. I believe it is my favorite book in the series because it puts Dr. Bill Brockton (the series protagonist whose life and work are based on that of Dr. Bill Bass) in several simultaneous predicaments from which the reader wonders if he can extricate himself. I won’t state here whether or not Dr. Brockton survives The Breaking Point. All the loose ends are tied up in the end yet, as in any good series, the door is left open for a new adventure.

An Excellent Historical Novel

I just finished reading an excellent historical novel. Cataloochee was Wayne Caldwell’s debut novel, and what an entertaining story it is! I read now as an aspiring novelist. Historical fiction is my first love, so I constantly try to identify and learn from what published authors do well. Reading Cataloochee on the heels of the 2014 publication of my vintage postcard book, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, made the story all the more vivid for me.

I like the way Mr. Caldwell follows families through several generations. In fact, that is what I am working toward in my own writing. Mr. Caldwell’s descriptive writing put me in the setting. I can see the plants he refers to and I can smell the flowers and other scents he mentions. His careful use of colloquialisms is a model I hope to emulate in my debut novel that has the working title, The Spanish Coin.

Cataloochee is historical fiction at its best, and I look forward to reading Mr. Caldwell’s second novel, Requiem by Fire. It carries forward some of the Cataloochee families as Great Smoky Mountains National Park becomes a reality and changes their lives forever.

Being from North Carolina, I am familiar with many of the places mentioned in Cataloochee. One of my late uncles lived on Hemphill Road in the Jonathan Creek community, and another late uncle was a Methodist preacher at Cataloochee in 1928. Oh how I wish I had asked Uncle Grady and Aunt Clara questions about their time there! Aunt Clara wrote a book, Lingering Echoes of the Blue Ridge: A Charge to Keep about some of her and Uncle Grady’s experiences in his various pastorates in western North Carolina.

Reading Cataloochee prompted me to reread Aunt Clara’s book. She and Wayne Caldwell are good storytellers and their books paint a picture of life in the Appalachian Mountains. On my next trip to the Great Smoky Mountains, I hope to visit Cataloochee. According to Aunt Clara’s book, the church where Uncle Grady preached was still there a few years ago. Since it is on national park land, I trust it is still being cared for and protected.

It was not until I was two-thirds of the way through Cataloochee that I thought about Aunt Clara’s book. Making this family connection with the places in Cataloochee was serendipitous. I can’t stop smiling!

A Week in the Life of a Struggling Writer

I debated over several possible titles for this post, and I settled on “A Week in the Life of a Struggling Writer.” Perhaps other struggling writers will read this and take comfort in reading about how my writing life is going. The content of this post will not be uplifting. Hang in there with me, though, to the last paragraph. After a bit of a pity party, in the end I was able to end on a positive note.

I promised in at least one earlier blog post that I would report on the outcomes of all the writing contests I entered. The last week or so has not been the highlight of my writing endeavors. I thought it was bad enough when I was notified that I had not won two competitions, but yesterday I received word that I had not won or placed in yet a third contest. I promised to report to you, so here goes.

In March, I submitted my short story titled Someone is Trying to Kill Me, in the Gemini Magazine Short Story Contest. My entry did not make the cut.

In June, I entered George Govan, A Gentle Man, in the Northern Colorado Writers’ Personal Essay/Creative Nonfiction Contest. I really thought I had a good chance to secure at least an Honorable Mention for that piece; however, it was not to be.

In July, I wrote a piece about the experiences I had a few years ago when I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Ira Lee Taylor about his military service during World War II. He was part of the D-Day Invasion of Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, and other battles in the European Theatre. I presented his memories of the war as a human interest story titled, Telling World War II Stories, and submitted it for the Page Crafter’s Prize in the On the Same Page Book Festival coming up in a couple of weeks in West Jefferson, North Carolina. I was proud of that piece, but I learned yesterday that I did not win or place in that competition.

I have entered nine writing contests in 2015. So far, I have not won or placed in any of them. I am more than a little discouraged today, but I will press on. The only way my writing will improve is through writing, writing, writing. It would have been helpful if I could not gotten some feedback from those nine contests, but I only received constructive criticism on one. It is difficult to learn from one’s mistakes when those missteps are not identified.

From these nine writing contests this year I have learned that I’m not as good a writer as I thought. That is a valuable lesson, lest I start thinking too highly of myself.

As I proofread this blog post, it occurred to me that I enjoyed the process of writing each of the nine pieces that I submitted in these contests. If that is all I get out of writing, that’s enough! Having the luxury at this time in my life to do some things that bring me joy is a gift that many people never experience.