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Stella's Special Summer by Carol Z. Lunney-Hampson
Kakapo Press$12.00, paperbackISBN: 978-0986383526June, 2015Fiction: Young AdultAvailable from www.Amazon.com
"Stella takes us 'up the Cabin' for an unforgettable summer with her family six decades ago before organized sports and technology (i.e. ipads and ipods) were required for summer fun. Readers of all ages will enjoy the gentle historic look, bringing back memories and opening eyes with delight and surprise."—Marvis Josaitis, Ph.D, author of Pennies From a Heav'n which won Honorable Mention in 2012 Paris Book Festival
In the summer of 1955, Stella, age eleven, works and plays with her family in a fish camp by a Pennsylvania river. Her parents are trying to earn enough money to pay off a bank note on their cabin. For Stella, this is a summer of emotional losses and growth. She forms a special friendship with a huge white horse and his owner. Luckily, by solving a mysterious crime, she is able to save the cabin.
Website: www.upthecabin.com.
Carol Z. Lunney-Hampson graduated from Keystone College in La Plume, Pennsylvania, and moved south to Greenville, North Carolina, where she graduated with a Master's Degree in Biology from East Carolina University. In her professional career, she taught college Biology, researched and published in the field of Electron Microscopy, and spent twenty-plus years working in product development, management, and marketing in the world of pharmaceuticals. Presently retired, she lives on a creek near the coastal town of New Bern, North Carolina, with her husband and enjoys writing, sailing, gardening, golf, and tennis.
Monsters by Maggie Riggans
CreateSpace$14.99, paperbackISBN: 978-1502467164September, 2014Fiction: Horror/SuspenseAvailable from www.Amazon.com
Katelyn Sheppard, Kate for short, and five of her peers are taken to fight for their lives after being abducted. Will she survive? Discover who the monster really is.
Maggie Riggans is a sixteen-year-old author from North Carolina. She became a published author at the age of fifteen. She also owns the blog Rest And Rhythms and has a love for the Lord.
Blue Apple Switchback by Carrie Highley
She Writes Press$16.90, paperback /$8.69, e-bookISBN: 978-1-63152-037-2June, 2016Nonfiction: MemoirAvailable from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
"Coming out is a long, hard road. Its twists, turns, and switchbacks can be painful and confusing, not only to the one coming out, but also to the ones she loves. In Blue Apple Switchback, Carrie Highley guides us through the sometimes-heartbreaking confusion of her path with bravery and tenderness. It is an important story that will surely help others find the way to accepting their true selves."―Chris Lemig, author of The Narrow Way
"10 Favorite Books About Coming Out."―SheKnows
"10 Books to take on a camping trip."―Sunset Magazine
Carrie Highley was always a tomboy―and by the time she turned sixteen, she was wishing she were dancing with the girls instead of the boys at cotillion dances. In her early thirties, while living in West Virginia, she discovered a passion for road biking, finally stopped sequestering her deep feelings for women, and began an ill-fated love affair with a female cycling friend. Then, at thirty-six, she found herself skidding into Asheville, North Carolina, holding on tight to the coattails of her doctor husband and spending her time as a stay-at-home mother of two boys.
Moving to North Carolina was Highley's attempt to reembrace heterosexual married life after her tumultuous time in West Virginia. But in Asheville, she met Charlie, a fellow cyclist twenty-three years her senior, who became her mentor, friend, and father all rolled into one―and as they grew closer, she started unloading her fears into Charlie's inbox. With Charlie's support, Highley finally got the courage to do what she'd been waiting her whole life to do: go down the mountain with her hands off the brakes.
Carrie Highley grew up in the Piedmont of North Carolina before moving to the mountains and completing her bachelor's degree in Therapeutic Recreation at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee. After moving up and down the east coast for fifteen years, she has settled down in Asheville. She is an active member Asheville Writers, Blue Ridge Bicycle Club, and Adventure Cycling Association. Her writing has appeared online in Women's Health, Bicycling, SheKnows, and Popsugar. Blue Apple Switchback is her first book.
Broken Eagle by James T. Crouse
Caromount Island Publishing $17.99, paperback / $3.99, e-bookISBN: 978-0-0074712-0-5June, 2016Fiction: ThrillerAvailable from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
"James Crouse's gripping drama resonates with realistic details from his deep knowledge about the law, aviation, and the military. It's a page turner in the mode of Scott Turow and John Grisham."—Sara Just, Executive Producer, PBS NewsHour and Senior Vice President WETA, formerly ABC News Nightline producer for seventeen years
"Broken Eagle leads the reader into a gathering vortex where a cutting-edge military aircraft with serious flaws, malevolent contractors, and complicit government program administrators with deadly self-protective agendas, and the widow of a military test pilot seeking answers swirl around a military-reservist aviation plaintiffs' lawyer who comes to realize he is at its center. Pursued by those with a deadly agenda, aided by shadowy allies and protected by his own wits and experience, Jake Baird finds the case he wasn't sure he wanted leading him to answers for questions he he'd been afraid to ask. Jim Crouse has the military aviation background and the aviation trial lawyer's experience to spin this story with gusto and credibility, which makes it very enjoyable—and just a little frightening—for the reader. Climb aboard, strap in and get ready for a memorable ride."—Gary W. Allen, editor of the Lawyer-Pilots Bar Association Journal, Former Director, Aviation & Admiralty Litigation, Torts Branch, Civil Division, United States Dept of Justice
"A good man is hard to find, but the unputdownable—and deeply moral—Broken Eagle gives you two for the price of one: Jake, the finely drawn ex-Army lawyer and everyday hero, and Crouse, his creator, who clearly knows the world and ways of the law, the military and the South inside out—and who writes as assuredly and convincingly about women (hallelujah!) as about combat, aviation and courtrooms. In this tale's troubling and all-too-believable tangle of Washington politics, murderously venal business interests, and scorched-earth tours of duty, you'll want both of these guys on your side."—Karen Shook, Books Editor, Times Higher Education, London
Following his service in a secret U.S. Army helicopter unit, attorney Jake Baird specializes in aviation personal-injury law in Raleigh, North Carolina. When young widow Lisa Thorpe seeks representation and help understanding the XV-11 crash that killed her husband, Jake ends up right where he doesn't want to be—taking on the U.S. military in a case that is almost impossible to win.
At a hastily arranged rendezvous just after meeting Lisa Thorpe, an anonymous, disheveled ex-military officer presses a folder of classified documents into Jake's hands with an ominous warning for Jake: "Watch your six." When Jake reads the file he understands the admonition: the file is full of classified documents showing a massive cover-up of the XV-11's flaws by governmental and corporate schemers intent on seeing the project continue for their own good, regardless of the cost in lives of the military persons operating the aircraft.
Jake soon finds his world crawling with men in dark suits and sunglasses who are intent on recovering the stolen XV-11 secret file and who are willing to do anything—including murder—to stop the dissemination of the damaging information. Jake is now confronted with risks to his own personal safety and the question of how to use the stolen classified information to help Lisa Thorpe—if he decides to take her case. But how can he, himself an Reserve Army aviator, remain silent, knowing that the aircraft's flaws endanger the lives of U.S. servicemen and women?
With the help of retired naval officer Stanford Kemp, Jake's irrepressible secretary, Florence, and his seer-suckered fellow lawyer Irwin Thompson, Jake devises an intricate plan to outmaneuver the lethal rogue government agents, the big corporations and the U.S. military, all of whom are intent on stopping him. Jake is in for the fight of his life--to save himself, do justice for Lisa Thorpe, and to save the lives of others.
James T. Crouse was born in Asheville and grew up in the small town of Lexington. He was graduated from Randolph-Macon Academy in Front Royal, Virginia, a military preparatory school, after which, as an Army ROTC Scholarship student, earned his B.A. in Political Science at Davidson College.
Upon graduation from Davidson, Mr. Crouse was commissioned in the U.S. Army as an Infantry officer, and attended helicopter flight school and Aviation Maintenance Officer Course and Test Pilot School as a Transportation Corps officer. During his initial six-year active duty career, he flew research and development flights for the Army's Night Vision Laboratory. He retired as a Lieutenant Colonel after having flown over 1500 hours in his twenty-six-year active and reserve career, performing medical evacuation, attack, and maintenance test flight duties.
Since graduating from Duke Law School in 1980, Mr. Crouse has practiced aviation and product liability law in which time he has represented several high-profile clients and was lead liability counsel in the world's largest civilian helicopter disaster (North Sea Boeing 234LR, 1986). Other notable experience includes major airline accident cases and general aviation, helicopter, and military crashes, as well as non-aviation mass disaster litigation. Over his career he has investigated over three hundred aviation crashes.
Mr. Crouse has co-authored a case law book, Aviation Law: Cases and Materials, which is critically acclaimed by scholars and practitioners. He is the editor-in-chief of Aviation Safety Blog, http://aviationsafetyblog.com, which is devoted to reducing aviation accidents, and is a published aviation and Civil War book reviewer for The Times of London Higher Education magazine.
Mr. Crouse has taught Aviation Law at Duke Law School, The George Washington University School of Law, and at St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas. He is a frequent speaker at aviation and legal symposia and has had numerous articles published in legal periodicals.
He lives in Raleigh with his wife and three children.
Chasing the North Star by Robert Morgan
Algonquin Books$25.95, hardcover / $12.99, e-bookISBN: 978-1-565126275April, 2016Fiction: HistoricalAvailable from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
"Chasing the North Star by Robert Morgan is the gripping and convincing story of a bright and courageous slave in the American South during the 1850s who runs away seeking freedom. Richly imaginative and thoroughly well-researched, Chasing the North Star walks the reader through an extensive and thrilling escape filled with fiery insight and deep personal conviction. Morgan summons a narrative that clearly describes the people, culture, and emotions of the time, especially in antebellum North Carolina and later in New York. His personal connection to the land, including its history and features, enables the reader to experience the thrilling escape vividly. His historical nuances and references are spot-on. Chasing the North Star is an epic journey, vividly detailed, acutely satisfying, and ultimately hopeful. It sheds light upon some of the darkest moments in American history; yet it also illuminates the charity and love expressed by whites who hid, fed and aided the runaways at the risk of their own lives and those of their families." —New York Journal of Books
"Morgan's latest is a grittily entertaining, smartly paced narrative about a fugitive slave. Morgan is a first-rate storyteller; he plots his novel extremely well, and readers will find this journey captivating." —Publishers Weekly
"Chasing the North Star is an epic journey, and Morgan's vision of our dark past shines brilliantly detailed, deeply satisfying, and ultimately hopeful." —Charles Frazier, author of Nightwoods and Cold Mountain
In his latest historical novel, bestselling author Robert Morgan brings to full and vivid life the story of Jonah Williams, who, in 1850, on his eighteenth birthday, flees the South Carolina plantation on which he was born a slave. He takes with him only a few stolen coins, a knife, and the clothes on his back--no shoes, no map, no clear idea of where to head, except north, following a star that he prays will be his guide.
Hiding during the day and running through the night, Jonah must elude the men sent to capture him and the bounty hunters out to claim the reward on his head. There is one person, however, who, once on his trail, never lets him fully out of sight: Angel, herself a slave, yet with a remarkably free spirit.
In Jonah, she sees her own way to freedom, and so sets out to follow him.
Bristling with breathtaking adventure, Chasing the North Star is deftly grounded in historical fact yet always gripping and poignant as the story follows Jonah and Angel through the close calls and narrow escapes of a fearsome world. It is a celebration of the power of the human spirit to persevere in the face of great adversity. And it is Robert Morgan at his considerable best.
Robert Morgan is the author of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, most notably his novel Gap Creek and his biography of Daniel Boone, both of which were national bestsellers. A professor at Cornell University since 1971 and visiting writer-in-residence at half a dozen universities, his awards include Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships and an Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature. He was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2010. Find him online at www.robert-morgan.com.
Serafina and the Twisted Staff by Robert Beatty
Disney-Hyperion$16.99, hardcover / $10.99, e-bookISBN: 978-1-484775035July, 2016Fiction: Middle GradeAvailable from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
"Triumphant after her defeat of the Man in the titular Black Cloak in her 2015 debut, Serafina cannot rest on her laurels for long: a new, mysterious evil force has entered the woods and set its sights on the Biltmore Estate. Serafina has slipped into a comfortable routine at Biltmore. The odd-looking girl learns the ways of catamounts from her shape-shifting momma while continuing her cozy home life with her white adoptive pa, enjoys friendship with Braeden Vanderbilt, and maintains a vermin-free environment as Chief Rat Catcher. Suddenly, as a new terror surfaces in the woods, three strangers appear: a snooty British girl named Lady Rowena Fox-Pemberton, the scarred investigator Detective Grathan, and a terrifying gray-bearded man with a twisted staff. On the mountain, all the birds have fled, other animals have gone missing, and sticky black pinesap oozes from the trees. While Mr. Vanderbilt cooperates with Detective Grathan and Braeden entertains Lady Rowena, Serafina must unravel the mystery before all the animals disappear. Beatty delivers an action-packed, suspenseful, emotionally resonant sequel. Serafina's resilience and determination inspire and rally the other characters. Beatty continues to build a fascinating magical world, the Blue Ridge Mountains and Biltmore Estate developing beyond mere settings into characters themselves. Each place reveals history and clues to Serafina's life and those of other gifted, mysterious beings. Even better than its predecessor, a sequel that delivers nonstop thrills from beginning to end." —Kirkus Reviews (STARRED REVIEW)
Serafina's defeat of the Man in the Black Cloak has brought her out of the shadows and into the daylight realm of her home, Biltmore Estate. Every night she visits her mother in the forest, eager to learn the ways of the cat¬amount. But Serafina finds herself caught between her two worlds: she's too wild for Biltmore's beautifully dressed ladies and formal customs, and too human to fully join her kin..
Late one night, Serafina encounters a strange and terrifying figure in the forest, and is attacked by the vicious wolfhounds that seem to be under his control. Even worse, she's convinced that the stranger was not alone, that he has sent his accomplice into Biltmore in disguise..
Someone is wreaking havoc at the estate. A mysterious series of attacks test Serafina's role as Biltmore's protector, culminating in a tragedy that tears Serafina's best friend and only ally, Braeden Vanderbilt, from her side. Heartbroken, she flees..
Deep in the forest, Serafina comes face-to-face with the evil infecting Biltmore—and discovers its reach is far greater than she'd ever imagined. All the humans and creatures of the Blue Ridge Mountains are in terrible danger. For Serafina to defeat this new evil before it engulfs her beloved home, she must search deep inside herself and embrace the destiny that has always awaited her.
Robert Beatty lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Asheville with his wife and three daughters who help create and refine his stories. He loves to explore the grand Biltmore Estate and the darkened forest trails where his novels take place. Mr. Beatty's Disney-Hyperion novel Serafina and the Black Cloak became a New York Times Bestseller the first week it was launched. He writes full-time now, but in his past lives, he was one of the early pioneers of cloud computing, the founder/CEO of Plex Systems, the co-founder of Beatty Robotics, and the chairman/CTO of Narrative Magazine. In 2007, he was named an Entrepreneur of the Year. When asked about the inspiration for his book, Robert said, "Serafina's journey grew out of my desire to write a story about an unusual and heroic young girl for my three daughters."
Blessing to Be Blue: A Memoir by Mable Singleton-Murrell
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform$15.00, paperback / $20.99, hardcover / $4.99, e-bookISBN: 978-1-530477456April, 2016Nonfiction: FaithAvailable from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
The author shares her story of precociousness as a young girl gifted with maturity beyond her years. After losing her mother at age 11, she struggles without guidance to survive in the world. She becomes a single mother at 17, and fights to escape poverty. Her journey from early childhood to adulthood was fraught of instability and challenges. Her genuine faith in God gave her solace and protection to weather the storms of life.
The book is a poignant retelling of her experiences as an inferior observer seeking to belong a coming to the discovery that belonging begins with self-acceptance. Blessing To Be Blue reads like a novel that touches you in ways that will enlighten, inspire, and entertain. It uncovers many truths about life. It is a memoir of faith, hope, and love.
Mable Singleton-Murrell is retired from a career in Wake County Government where she worked as a human services administrator. She was committed to improving the quality of life for the chronically mentally ill adults. In her retirement, she is steadfast in her lifelong pursuit of knowledge as well as a voice for women and men who are overcoming life's challenges.
Her academic career began at Craven Community College where she earned an Associates in Applied Science in childhood education. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Human Services Administration from Antioch University Philadelphia, and a Master's of Arts degree in Liberal Studies from North Carolina State University.
She delights in her family and enjoys spending time with them in Apex, North Carolina.
Worthy by Carla G. Harper
IngramSpark$8.99, paperback / $4.99, e-bookISBN: 978-0-997190717May, 2016Fiction: Southern / Coming-of-AgeAvailable from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
Worthy Stokes grew up in a house full of secrets, a place where whispers floated from underneath closed doors and stories about the way things were went unquestioned.
Worthy lives in a house full of secrets, then in the summer of 1945 a murder changes everything.
Seventeen-year-old Worthy lives in a house full of secrets where everyone dutifully plays their role. She copes by creating outlandish dreams of a bright future and relying on her wits. In the summer of 1945, her father is accused of a sensational murder. Her plans to get out of Hogan's Creek suddenly become tied up in a reckless yet exciting pursuit of truth and ultimately justice. She'll nearly lose her life, but along the way she finds love, hope, and the truth about her family in unlikely places.
Worthy is a coming-of-age story based loosely on the murder of a Melungeon horse trader in the late 1700s on the border between North Carolina and Virginia. Melungeons are a tri-racial people who originated in North Carolina's Outer Banks during the 1500s when pirates and explorers frequented the Atlantic sea lanes. Their Western European, Native American, and African bloodlines resulted in many shades of brown and often odd gray eyes. An individual's appearance impacted how they made their way in society through the ages.
Worthy grapples with questions about love, belonging, and justice.
Kill All Cats by Rick Bylina
CreateSpace$13.99, paperbackASIN: 1533581916June, 2016Fiction: Mystery / Anti-CozyAvailable from www.Amazon.com
"Brilliant! Rick Bylina has written a masterful tale of mystery, suspense, paranoia, and wit. In Kill All Cats, when the bodies of Nedra Kratz and her thirty-eight felines are discovered, everyone in the cul-de-sac neighborhood of Apex, North Carolina, is suspect, especially the protagonist, Ron Black. But, Ron has an alibi…or does he? The suspense begins on page one and doesn't let up through thunderstorms, bowling alleys, haunted research labs, and Ron Black's locked house. Brisbane, Ron's pet cockatiel, seems better at solving the mystery than the detectives. A real page turner and a shining FIVE Stars!"—Shelia Bolt Rudesill, Pittsboro, NC, author of Child of my Heart
"No one does 'whodunnit' like Rick Bylina.This book is a masterful mix of suspense and human drama that will keep you reading late into the night. The characters are vibrant, the animal welfare theme poignant, and the story goes beyond entertainment to a depth one rarely finds in this genre. It's a jewel which I'm proud—and honored—to have had the opportunity to read it as an ARC, and which deserves a wide and diverse audience."—Guilie Castillo-Oriard, Curacao, author of The Miracle of Small Things
"Provocative title—wicked cover—what is this author's agenda? Surely he jests! He jests. It's one of the things I like best about Rick Bylina's prose. I picture him in real life saying shocking things with a straight face, just to see how people will react. There are extended scenes with friends in a bowling alley. I have no interest in bowling. The characters kept me turning pages anyway. Just don't remind me of Phil. Or the dead cats. (In real life, no cats were harmed in the writing of this story. All right. All right.) Still, if I think about it too long, I'll be yanking stars back, saying How DARE you, Rick, how DARE you! (less)"—Carol Kean, Top Vine Amazon Reviewer
Ron Black is a thirty-five-year-old night security guard living a moribund existence. Past deeds need to stay buried for him to remain a free man. When the elderly cat lady next-door dies along with her thirty-eight cats, Ron feels the investigative heat from Detectives Moore and Porter. His alibi: "I was at work." The police disrupt Ron's life, which he shares with Brisbane, his cockatiel. He squawks surprisingly relevant quotes learned from watching crime show reruns 24/7—some of which don't help Ron's situation. Ron picks up clues about what happened next-door from conflicting comments by his odd neighbors: "She was popped." "Poisoned." "Chopped up." The neighbors include Ron's estranged great-uncle Kirk, a disgruntled scientist, who had worked at the pharmaceutical company where Ron is the night guard. When Ron's only friend, Jean, disappears, the police double-down on him as a suspect for this crime, too. The next day, the police infer his arrest in twenty-four hours for the crime at his neighbor's house. Despite the pressure to save himself, he is compelled to find his friend. Sprinkle a bit of an Agatha Christie closed-room mystery with the situational humor of Evanovich for a high-level concept as Ron tries to "…control what he can control." And just when you think it's all over, another layer of horror reveals itself, and Ron didn't even see it coming.
A Year Since the Rain by Shane Wilson
Snow Leopard Publishing$16.00, paperback / $26.50, hardcover / $2.99, e-bookASIN: 1944361081March, 2016Fiction: Magic RealismAvailable from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
Alan—a heart-broken and stubborn computer programmer—took much in his life for granted, including the vast supply of water in his town. But when the rains stop falling and the rivers dry up, he begins to realize how temporary it all can be. His life begins to unravel as, across town, a sinkhole threatens to swallow every bit of the place he has come to call home.
Taken on a journey of self-discovery by the magical women in his life, Alan is drawn into an unexpected affair and comes face-to-face with a Mystic who walks through his dreams. For Alan, dreams become a new reality, and reality erodes into something of a dream. As his town transforms into an arid wasteland that crumbles beneath his feet, Alan is compelled by the inevitable to strike out into the unknown or perish.
Born in Alabama and raised in Georgia, Shane is a child of the southeastern United States where he feels simultaneously at-home and out-of-place. He graduated from Valdosta State University in south Georgia with a Masters in English. He taught college English in Georgia for four years before moving to North Carolina in 2013.
No matter the temperature outside, there is always an iced coffee in his hand when he walks into class in the mornings. He tends to chase the day with a whiskey and a re-run of The Office.
Shane has published poetry in Tethered by Letters and the Stonepile Writers' Anthology, Volume III. He is currently at work on a new novel as well as a collection of short stories based on the mythos of and set in the same town as A Year Since the Rain.
The Serpentine Flower by Joseph LS Terrell
BellaRosaBooks$14.95, paperback / $6.99, e-BookISBN: 978-162268-047-4May, 2016Fiction: MysteryAvailable from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
When Mary Ann Little returns to the Tracks Community Theater for the first time since her husband's untimely onstage death, she is horrified to discover the body of young Sarah Atkins backstage. Mary Ann is convinced that Sarah's death was no accident, but everyone, including the chief of police, seems reluctant to discuss the possibility that someone in small-town Camford Courthouse is a killer.
Mary Ann's regrets vocalizing her suspicions when her nineteen-year-old son emerges as a suspect. To unravel the mystery, Mary Ann goes back to work for Thaddeus Sinclair, the editor of the local paper and a "rumpled skeptic" for whom Mary Ann becomes aware of a growing attraction. It soon becomes clear that this small town near North Carolina's Outer Banks harbors more more than its share of secrets.
But can Mary Ann uncover those secrets and flush out the killer while juggling her new job, her burgeoning romance, her part-time work at the local library, and the unexpected role of "third witch" in the theater's production of Shakespeare's Macbeth? And even more important, can she do it all without getting herself killed?
Joseph L.S. Terrell makes his home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, his native state, where he continues the craft of fiction writing—with a little fishing, golfing, and boating thrown in. Website: www.josephterrellwriter.com.
WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH—The North Carolina Writers' Network 2013 Fall Conference will be held at the Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort in Wrightsville Beach, November 15-17.
The Fall Conference attracts hundreds of writers from around the country and provides a weekend full of activities that include lunch and dinner banquets with readings, keynotes, tracks in several genres, open mic sessions, and the opportunity for one- on-one manuscript critiques with editors or agents. Conference faculty include professional writers from North Carolina and beyond.
Wilmington resident Clyde Edgerton will give the Keynote Address. Edgerton, a North Carolina native, is the author of five New York Times Notable Books and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Philip Gerard will lead the Master Class in Creative Nonfiction. Gerard is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and the author of, most recently, Down the Wild Cape Fear.
The Fiction Master Class will be led by Rebecca Lee. Winner of the 2013 Danuta Gleed Literary Award, Lee is the author of the short- story collection Bobcat and Other Stories. She earned her MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and is an associate professor in the UNCW Creative Writing Program.
Peter Makuck will lead the Poetry Master Class. His 2010 poetry collection Long Lens: News & Selected Poems, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He is the Distinguished Professor Emeritus at East Carolina University.
Registration for the NCWN 2013 Fall Conference opens in early September. Save the date!
COLUMBIA, SC—Kathryn Stripling Byer has won the 2013 Southern Independent Booksellers Association Award for her poetry collection, Descent (LSU Press, 2012).
Byer, a 2012 inductee to the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, serves on the North Carolina Writers' Network Board of Trustees and will lead the three-day poetry workshop at the upcoming Squire Summer Writing Residency in Cullowhee.
She was North Carolina's first woman Poet Laureate and has published six full-length collections of poetry. A re-print of her first, the AWP Award-winning The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest, is forthcoming from Press 53. Her work has appeared in many journals and newspapers, including The Atlantic, Hudson Review, Boston Globe, and Georgia Review.
The SIBA Awards celebrate the best in Southern literature, from the people who would know...Southern Independent (and independently-minded!) Booksellers.
Each year, hundreds of booksellers across the South vote on their favorite "handsell" books of the year. These are the "Southern" books they have most enjoyed selling to customers; the ones that they couldn't stop talking about. The SIBA Book Award was created to recognize great books of southern origin.
Books are nominated in several categories, and North Carolina was well-represented. Tar Heel native Wiley Cash won the Fiction category for his debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home. Farmville resident Sheila Turnage won the Young Adult cateogry for her book, Three Times Lucky. And Jay Erskine Leutze was named the Nonfiction Winner for his book, Stand Up That Mountain.
SIBA is a trade association which represents over 300 bookstores and thousands of booksellers in Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and Mississippi. The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance exists to empower, promote, and celebrate their core member bookstores in a spirit of partnership.
A Way I Sing by Patty Cole
Main Street Rag$8.00, paperbackSeptember, 2015PoetryAvailable for pre-order from the publisher
"Saying Patty Cole writes about death is far too simplistic an assumption. While there is suicide and haunting music playing in the background among the cows, snakes, and birds, we understand how one doesn't need to repeat the past; rather, the pain of the past allows us to be more mindful of the present. Cole is a master at using one-word images to streamline complicated emotions. ('Twenty little birds flew in a torrent toward an oak tree / in the middle of a meadow / then up through a sky suddenly ripped open.') Within Cole's collection of journeys we feel degrees of loss from a daughter losing her mother to decayed fruit in the refrigerator to the loss of young lives after Sandy Hook. Thanks to Cole's work, we're reminded that when we embark on any journey, we may lose our innocence, but gain deep knowledge. Drink up these poems to find the bits of your life 'in the dust lining every room, / sticking to cobwebs where memories hang.'"—Alice Osborn, author of Heroes without Capes and editor of Creatures of Habitat
Part of the MSR Author's Choice Chapbook Series
Night to Day
I stand in the backyard smoking, 3 a.m., no sleep for zombies like me. Curse Hollywood horror movies. I imagine vampires are tipping the waiter, rummaging in their pockets for loose change, full of cat, rat, and possum, then stealing away to die all over again.
I die knowing the moon will raise her speckled skirt, and the sun will subtract while the mockingbird sings a new day—all before I'll sleep.
Even Venus will fade.
Patty Cole lives on a farm in Chatham County, North Carolina, where she and her husband raise chickens, goats, and scrumptious delights from their orchard and garden. She studied English and French at West Virginia State University where she graduated with honors. She has earned awards from the Fields of Earth Poetry Contest and the North Carolina Poetry Society.
Mrs. Hudson in New York by Barry S. Brown
MX Publishing$16.95, paperbackISBN: 978-1-780927886July, 2015Fiction: MysteryAvailable for pre-order from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
Mrs. Hudson is at it again. Accompanied by Holmes and Watson, she crosses the ocean to attend the wedding of her cousin's daughter only to discover that the young lady's fiance, a pitcher for the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, stands accused of an attempt on the life of J.P. Morgan and the death of his aide.
To prove his innocence the unacknowledged sage of Baker Street will lead Holmes and Watson on a path of investigation taking them from J.P. Morgan's mansion to the gambling dens of New York's Tenderloin. Along the way she will enlist the assistance of Mark Twain to frustrate efforts to corrupt the game of baseball, and rescue the prospective bride and groom from would-be assassins before returning finally to the comparative quiet of 221B Baker Street.
Barry S. Brown is the author of three volumes describing the exploits of Mrs. Hudson and her colleagues as well as half a dozen short stories. He has also published widely in the fields of mental health, criminology, and drug abuse over the course of a career in clinical research. He had been inclined to rest on his laurels until he discovered their pointy leaves.
Buried Seed by Martha O. Adams
House of Myrrth$13.99, paperbackISBN: 978-0980141818March, 2015PoetryAvailable from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
"Between what Martha O. Adams sees and what she says about it dwells a field of music that shapes her every expression. The world doesn't look, or sound, the same as it did once you look up from her poems."—Laura Hope-Gill, poet laureate of the Blue Ridge Parkway and Director, Thomas Wolfe Center for Narrative
"Adams' poetry engages the senses and envelops the soul, always evoking through her multitude of voices, a harmonious image of humanity and our interconnectedness with the natural world."—Jessica Nevitt, MA, Educator and Blogger for New York Times Schoolbook
"In these poems, you are invited to bear witness to transformative moments as experienced by a writer who tenderly cares for them as if they were seedlings and she looks to your hands to hold them, soil, roots and all. Martha O. Adams' handling of words is authentic, precise, and in the moment, a reflection of how she chooses to live her life. In a transplanted state after meditating with her work, I am in a carefully constructed place which invites my own journey. I cannot think of any higher praise for a poet than to say she moves the reader this far, creating one's own place of beginnings. Much like a buried seed."—Jay Joslin, author, One for the Nameless; poet, clinician/counselor, community minister
As we stumble into awareness of our impact on the earth, Adams' poems are lit candles that focus the eye with her ruthless gaze into the human heart. She finds there a sanctuary of uncommon strengths and shadowed frailties where buried seeds root and bloom.
Adams makes a garden in your heart's fertile ground and sows her love poems with an experienced hand. "You must marry the earth," she announces. Tender moments shine like prisms hung in a breeze. She takes you where time disappears; inside an okra seed, wilderness canoeing, making love, even inside a dream to take a lesson with a blues man. You'll stand "ankle deep in this heathen holy land" at ocean's edge, time travel to swing from a beam in a Kansas barn, and mourn with her the savage losses common to us all.
Martha O. Adams studied cello from second grade through college, rich compost for the musicality of her verse. Adams' poetry springs from roots in Ohio, Kansas, Illinois, and Connecticut. Her tree of poems has flourished long in the mountains of western North Carolina, bearing winter fruit in the Florida Keys. She has two other collections of poems: What Your Heart Needs to Know (2008) and Peeling the Rind (2000). Her Reader's Theater Play poem, "She Rises Through the Sickle Moon," has been performed in locations from New England to Florida.
Adams' poems have been published in magazines and four anthologies, most recently in the pages of Crossing Lines Anthology; Main Street Rag (2015), and The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol.VII, NC (Texas Review Press, 2015).
Martha performs her poems wherever invited with a sense of joy for opportunities to awaken a love for poetry that lies sleeping in the human heart. She grows most of the family vegetables in her organic garden and lives with her husband, Bob, in Hendersonville.
The Ghost of Battle Ridge by Susan La Serna
Warren Publishing$10.99, paperbackISBN: 978-1-943258055April, 2015Fiction: YA / HistoricalAvailable from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
"The woods darkened as clouds gathered into the late winter sky. Soldiers were shouting in the background, while the ripple of musket and grapeshot bounced off the trees... A clap of thunder pierced the silence.... They were scared, they were more than scared. They were in the midst of war!"
When school kids unearth an old canteen near a graveyard...What happens next is Revolutionary!
The Ghost of Battle Ridge is based on the Revolutionary War's Battle of Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina. This engaging and entertaining book for young adults weaves the lives of 21st Century classmates as they encounter a phantom of the colonial past. The classmates are confronted by the harsh realities and inequities of our New Nation. The Ghost of Battle Ridge is the perfect addition to social studies literacy circles and read alouds.
Susan La Serna, author and teacher lives in Raleigh, NC. She was nominated for the Gilder-Lehrman American History award for Wake County Public schools in 2013.This award recognizes those who promote American History through teaching, writing, and public speaking. Susan is an avid storyteller, writer, and teacher. The book The Ghost of Battle Ridge was awarded the Eric Hoffer finalist award for young readers. The story was inspired by by her many years teaching US history in California and North Carolina. Susan La Serna graduated from the University of California, Sacramento. She has a Bilingual Cross Cultural teaching credential. Susan La Serna has also published bilingual Indigenous legends for children. She is currently writing a young adult book on World War II. Susan and her husband Sabad have three adult children and three grandchildren who live in California and North Carolina.
Dead Right Returning by Joseph L.S. Terrell
Bella Rosa Books$14.95, paperback / $5.99 e-bookISBN: 978-1-62268-079-5May, 2015Fiction: MysteryAvailable from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
"With the deadpan savvy delivery of Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade and the clipped declarative sentences of Dashiell Hammett, this volume, like its predecessors, reaches out in the very first sentence, grabs you by the lapels, and never lets up."—Joseph Bathanti, former North Carolina Poet Laureate
"Smooth writing from an eloquent storyteller goes down like fine scotch. This is a keeper."—Marrie Toussaint, author of Cleopatra Jones Mysteries
An early morning boater is horrified to find the slain body of a young man tied by his wrists to the ladder on one of the permanent channel markers leading to the Manteo Waterfront. This discovery launches a multi-pronged investigation into a network of drug dealings—and more bodies in the heretofore peaceful pre-Christmas days at North Carolina's Outer Banks. The book, the fifth in a series, features crime writer Harrison Weaver.
Joseph Terrell, a native North Carolinian who now makes his home on the Outer Banks, is the author of nine novels. A graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, he has more than forty years of published writing experience in fiction and journalism.
Slow of Study by David E. Poston
Main Street Rag$13, paperbackISBN: 978-1-59948-534-8November, 2015PoetryAvailable for pre-order ($7!) from the publisher
"David Poston's Slow of Study does his heart good—and mine too—triumphing out of the old blind bewilderment of sin, improvising toward a grace and roar of words to figure, finally, the way to worlds of dark light waiting to be felt and embraced."—Shelby Stephenson, North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee and current North Carolina Poet Laureate
"David E. Poston's Slow of Study is an steadfast, sonically sophisticated collection of strong-headed and strong-hearted poems that never dwell in ethereal or purposefully befuddling linguistic games. Instead, these poems are sharp-eyed critiques and candid narratives, as well as bittersweet and sometimes bellicose appraisals of Southern religious experience. Too, these poems are often genuinely humorous. Consequently, there's real love in this volume, a love not merely for the world in which contradictions and hypocrisy enrich the wit and the contours of the poetry, but clear appreciation for fiery motifs: family, death, Christianity, and love itself. Poston shows us places 'where the grass ain't greener at all…' Where the voice is unafraid to sing with fertile lyricism and creative candor, where the poet is unflinching but never reckless, where true originality blossoms from bald, often desolate truths."—William Wright, author of Tree Heresies and Night Field Anecdote, series editor of The Southern Poetry Anthology
"Despite its title, David E. Poston's Slow of Study is a jaunty collection with a go-for-broke approach that eschews fear and half-measures. Some poems wrestle with Jesus and the Old Testament, while others shake the rafters with a kind of rock poetry. The volume moves toward affirmation not afraid to risk sentiment, ending with the title poem echoing in serenity. The speed and energy of these poems sweep the reader along in a varied dance."—David Radavich, author of The Countries We Live In
Counting Steps
Smooth-humped stones line the gray path. In July the herb garden is only sticks and bleached signs curling in the heat; even the beetles scatter dust. But around sudden corners the water- strings spiral through the thick air, plucked by unseen fingers spreading faint tinkling brass and the laughter of bells dancing in the hollowed pools, trickling away through the mosses.
St. Francis bows his cool face into the gentle chiaroscuro of the goldfish pond swirled by dangling fingertips. Washed over by the circling hum of the city, this is the ebb-time, under a mazy canopy of vine and branch woven by birdsong and splash of wings blue-gray, white-tipped, brown-speckled, scarlet— God's bright trinkets. Even the least of these finds cool shade here, a deep spirit-draught, a music that is never still.
David E. Poston taught for thirty years in various public schools, at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and at Charlotte's Young Writers' Workshop, and he continues to teach occasional creative writing workshops. His work has appeared in various journals, including Asheville Poetry Review, English Journal, Iodine Poetry Journal, Main Street Rag, Nerve Cowboy, and The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society, and has been widely anthologized. His previous poetry collections are My Father Reading Greek and Postmodern Bourgeois Poetaster Blues, winner of the Randall Jarrell/Harperprints Chapbook Competition. He lives in Gastonia, North Carolina.
Hats Off! to Charles "LC" Fiore whose short story collection, A Shot of Light into which We Disappear, is a finalist for the 2016 Moon City Short Fiction Award.
Hats Off! to Brenda Kay Ledford whose poem "Light Show" appears in WestWard Quarterly: Summer 2016.
Hats Off! to Beth Browne who received a Regional Artist Project Grant from the United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County to attend a video editing class at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.
Hats Off! to Joan Leotta whose short story "Red and Yellow Bracelet," which is meant to be read to children, will appear in Ruby for Women. Also, her poem "Summer Shimmers" is up this week in Avocet, a journal of nature poems.
Hats Off! to Carol Phillips whose column "The Loss of Self," which addresses disability and job loss, appeared in Raleigh's The News & Observer.
Hats Off! to Betty Jamerson Reed whose poem "An Octogenarian Ponders" appears in the River Poets Special Edition for 2016 of Signature Poems, Volume 10, Issue 1. It had previously been published in Living with Loss Magazine, Summer 2011. In addition, three of her "Napkin-Pocket" poems were published by River Poets Journal (Lily Press) during the month of April to celebrate National Poetry Month.
Hats Off! to NCWN Trustee Michele Tracy Berger whose poem "The Shells of Pink Bodies" appears in Oracle: Fine Arts Review. Also, her short story "The Curl of Emma Jean" appears in the anthology UnCommon Origins: A Collection of Gods, Monsters, Nature and Science (Fighting Monkey Press). UnCommon Origins presents twenty-two depictions of moments on the precipice, beginnings both beautiful and tragic. Fantastical stories of Creation, Feral Children, Gods and Goddesses (both holy and horrific), and possibilities you never dared imagine come to life. Including stories from some of the most talented Speculative Fiction and Magical Realism authors around, UnCommon Origins revisits the oldest questions in the universe: Where did we come from? and What comes next?
By Danielle "Danny" Bernstein
NORTH CAROLINA—Sometimes it's what happens toward the end that is the most important.
I signed up for the Creative Nonfiction track, led by Virginia Holman, at the Network's 2011 Squire Summer Writing Residency. I prepared by reading her memoir Rescuing Patty Hearst and fretting about which eight pages of my own to send to be workshopped. Finally I took a chance and sent in pages from a new project that I'm considering. After publishing two hiking guides, I am starting a travel adventure; I'm trying not to use the word memoir. I have 200 pages of notes and blog entries about hiking the Mountains-to-Sea Trail through North Carolina, but the questions I came with were "Do I have a book?" and "How do I go forward from these notes?"
I received pages from my classmates and saw how different they were from mine. Two wrote about difficult family situations, one about lessons learned over a long and successful life. The only fellow in our group had written a family history about his ancestor in the Civil War. What if they thought my writing trivial and inconsequential?
I love New Bern. I've been there twice, and I jumped at a legitimate reason for traveling 375 miles from Asheville to delve into more of its history. I came a day early because I knew that once the residency started, we would be immersed in writing: our own, and everyone else's.
For our first evening, the Network had made arrangements for a trip to the John Wright Stanly House, close to Tryon Palace. The house was built in the early 1780s by a well-to-do shipping magnate and Revolutionary leader. Three generations of "Stanly women" told us their stories. They were terrific. I took good notes because I was sure that we'd have to write about it—we didn't.
The next morning we met in our group and Virginia started by workshopping everyone's work. Since our group was small, we each had ninety minutes. That's a lot, and I felt that my eight pages didn't deserve all that time.
But the discussion wasn't just about what was on the page, but where this was going, and how to keep writing. Virginia explained that we needed to search for our "narrative persona." A memoir can't be just a sequence of events; it needs to be consequential. At first, this didn't mean much to me, but I wrote it down dutifully.
Faculty and student readings were scheduled in between the workshops. That opened up the residency to more than just our small group. There was a panel session on how to appeal to editors and agents—the perennial discussion on how to get published.
Once all our pieces were workshopped, Virginia gave us some exercises to jog our memories and get us to write spontaneously. We had to draw a map of a place that we knew well, label it, and write what happened there. I'm not much of an artist, but I drew a map of the entrance to the Smokies from the Cherokee Reservation. Then I wrote about meeting a Cherokee woman and her small nursery-school class on the Oconaluftee River Trail. I had forgotten about her, but with a map, I could recollect so much.
For another exercise, we had to bring a photograph that meant something to us and write about it. I had seen these exercises in books before, but I had never done them. It took a class and a workshop leader to make me see how useful these were.
On the last day, each of us met with Virginia privately. She had given me an essay by Phillip Lopate titled "Writing Personal Essays: On the Necessity of Turning Oneself into a Character." We discussed the article, and it confirmed what she said in the workshop: no one can write about his or her whole self, so what will be my persona for what I'm writing?
Then came the payoff. Virginia suggested that each chapter of my adventure be turned into a series of problems and solutions as a way of creating this strong narrative persona. Then I can divide my stories under several categories such as the hike itself, historical thread, and emotional thread. She said, "Build it like a mosaic and then organize the material."
It was a long, hot drive back to Asheville as I tried to keep my mind on the road, and not on my book.
DANIELLE "DANNY" BERNSTEIN is a hiker, hike leader, and outdoor writer. Her two guidebooks Hiking the Carolina Mountains (2007) and Hiking North Carolina's Blue Ridge Heritage (2009) were published by Milestone Press. She writes for regional magazines including Mountain Xpress and Smoky Mountain Living and blogs about the outdoors at www.hikertohiker.com.
Hats Off! to Russell Colver whose poem "Commencement" has won the North Carolina Literary Review's 2016 James Applewhite Poetry Prize competition. Colver will receive $250, and the poem will be published in the 2017 print issue of the North Carolina Literary Review due out next summer. Colver's poem "Acceptable Losses" was also recognized for honorable mention and will be published in NCLR Online in early 2017.
NCWN Trustee Paul Jones won Second Place for his poem "Clear Channel," and his poem "Basketball Is a Kind of Poetry" won an Honorable Mention.
Other poets whose poems were selected as finalists and for publication in 2017 are Peg Bresnahan, Kathryn Kirkpatrick, Susan M. Lefler, Joan Leotta, Gina Malone, Priscilla Melchior, Diana Pinckney, Tori Reynolds, and Susan Schmidt.
NORTH CAROLINA— The North Carolina Writers' Network has announced the winners of its four annual spring literary awards, granting over $2,000 in prize money as part of its continuing mission to foster the literary arts in the Tar Heel State.
Kristin Fitzpatrick of Alameda, California, won the 2011 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize for her short story, "Queen City Playhouse." Fitzpatrick, the 2009-2010 Writer-in-Residence at The Seven Hills School in Cincinnati, Ohio, received $1,000, and her story will be considered for publication in a forthcoming issue of The Thomas Wolfe Review.
"Great story, amazing characters, excellent conceit," summarized final judge Martin Clark. The acclaimed author of three bestselling novels, Clark chose "Queen City Playhouse" from more than 140 entries—the most in the competition's history.
Thomas Wolf of Chapel Hill won the 2011 Doris Betts Fiction Prize competition for his short story "Boundaries." Wolf received a prize of $250, and his story will be published in the 2012 issue of the North Carolina Literary Review. This is Wolf's second Doris Betts Fiction Prize—he also won in 2007 with his short story, "Distance."
"The impressive power of the winning story, 'Boundaries,' comes from the quiet longing with which it is told," said author and final judge Liza Wieland. "'Boundaries' shows us quite brilliantly the truth of Faulkner's notion of the past—that it is never dead, and not even past."
Rocky Point resident Pepper Capps Hill penned the winning essay for the 2011 Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Competition. Hill, a museum educator at the Cape Fear Museum of History and Science, won $300 and publication in Southern Cultures for her essay, "There's No Crying in a Tobacco Field."
"This essay took me into a world I barely knew—a North Carolina tobacco field," said author and final judge Jay Varner. "Here is a piece wrestling with the hard lessons learned plucking leaves from the field and longterm medical concerns these former tobacco kids could face."
Author and longtime Charlotte Observer writer Dannye Romine Powell won the 2011 Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition for her poem "I Am the Girl." Powell received $200, and her winning poem—selected from close to 100 entries—will be considered for publication in the literary journal The Crucible.
"It's a poem strongly driven by voice and idea," said final judge and poet Dan Albergotti. "I love how this deceptively simple poem navigates what is actually highly complex at the level of syntax, temporality, perspective, and emotion."
The Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition honors the work and legacy of the poet and critic Randall Jarrell, who taught at what is now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for nearly eighteen years. The competition is open to any writer who is a legal resident of North Carolina or a member of the North Carolina Writers' Network.
The same is true for both the Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Competition (which honors the longtime Salisbury Post columnist) and the Doris Betts Fiction Prize (honoring the author and Alumni Distinguished Professor Emerita at UNC Chapel Hill of the same name).
Two honorable mentions were awarded for the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, which honors the internationally acclaimed novelist and North Carolina native and accepts submissions from writers regardless of geographic location: Lisa Gornick of New York, New York, for her short story "Eleanor," and Barbara Modrack of Brighton, Michigan, for "Gone." Joseph Cavano's short story, "The Honey Wagon," won second-place in the 2011 Doris Betts Fiction Prize, while the poem "From Dry Seed Casings" by Mary Jo Amani was named runner-up for the 2011 Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition.
Prizes of $200 and $100 were awarded to the second- and third-place 2011 Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Competition finishers—or in this case, finisher. Davidson writer Cynthia Lewis collected both consolation prizes for her essays, "That Dress, That Hat" and "Secret Sharing: Coming Out in Charleston."
The nonprofit North Carolina Writers' Network is the state's oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to writers at all stages of development. For additional information, visit www.ncwriters.org.
Hats Off! to Heather Bell Adams whose short story "White Iris" won Second Place in the 2016 Savannah Anthology Short Story Contest.
Hats Off! to Dana Stone who has three poems forthcoming in Snapdragon, Fox Adoption Magazine, and Music for the Prose.
Hats Off! to James T. Crouse whose legal thriller Broken Eagle was favorably reviewed by Diane Donovan, Senior Reviewer, in Midwest Book Review (Small Press Bookwatch, August). "Part of what sets Broken Eagle apart from genre thriller or investigative reads is its in-depth focus on military and aviation processes. Readers who are used to lawyer protagonists operating fairly narrowly in courtroom proceedings will be delighted to find that (the protagonist's) prowess and purposes embrace far more than courtroom environments and client encounters. Another notable feature of Broken Eagle is its attention to developing subplots that detail a host of special interests and their sometimes-conflicting interactions....The result is far more than the usual kind of story 'legal thriller' genre readers will expect, and is highly and especially recommended for anyone who appreciates military intrigue and aviation legal matters wound into the bigger picture of those who have sacrificed for their nation in more ways than one."
Hats Off! to Paula Martinac whose short story "Eds and Meds" is forthcoming in Main Street Rag.
Hats Off! to Blaine Paxton Hall whose article "Learning the Thunder" appears in Raleigh's The News & Observer.
Hats Off! to Staci Lynn Bell who won a Silver medal for her short story "Cheyenne" and a Bronze medal for her poem "Time" in the North Carolina Cherokee/Clay Silver Arts 2016. Also, her poem "Escape" appears in the anthology Wish You Were Here (Old Mountain Press). This poem was originally published in Wild Goose Poetry Review.
Hats Off! to Staci Lynn Bell whose poem "Unanswered Prayers" is forthcoming in KAKALAK 2016 scheduled for release this fall.
Hats Off! to Jennifer Weiss whose poem "Without Breathing" will appear in KAKALAK 2016.
Hats Off! to Jim Minick whose novel Fire Is Your Water is due out from Ohio University Press early in 2017. Also, his short nonfiction piece "Birth" just appeared in the online journal Still. And this Fall, Poets & Writers will publish an article on his experience teaching in one MFA program while studying in another. Look for it in the September/October issue.
Hats Off! to Debra Madaris Efird, of Harrisburg, who received an Honorable Mention in the Savannah Authors Workshop Writing Contest. Her story "Revival" will be published in the Savannah Anthology 2016 coming out late summer.
Hats Off! to Brenda Kay Ledford whose poem, "The Greatest," appears in the online rag The Skinny Poetry Journal, June, 2016.
Hats Off! to Larry W. Fish whose novella, Out of the Darkness, about school bullying, is at the publisher and should be available sometime around the first of August. It should be read by students, parents, and teachers.
Hats Off! to Henderson County regional rep Patricia Vestal whose flash fiction "DIRT" appeared on FlashFlood for National Flash Fiction Day, June 25. She was also quoted in an article on the Lost Playwrights of Western North Carolina in the July-August edition of The Dramatist, the official publication of the Dramatists Guild of America, of which she is a member. North Carolina Dramatists Guild rep. Kim Stinson profiles the group, which meets the third or fourth Saturday monthly in the Hendersonville Public Library Kaplan Auditorium. Guests are invited. There are no fees.
The North Carolina Writers' Network will be out and about throughout (or, if you're from the Outer Banks, "oat and aboat throughoat") the state this fall.
On September 12, the Network will have exhibit tables at both Winston-Salem's BookMARKS Book Festival (www.bookmarksbookfestival.org) and the North Carolina Literary Festival at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (www.ncliteraryfestival.org).
From September 25–27, the Network will display some of its members' books at the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance's 2009 Trade Show in Greenville, South Carolina (www.sibaweb.com/trade-show). In August we will let our members know how they can have their books included in this display.
Network representatives will be on hand at the North Carolina Poetry Society meeting on October 24 at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines, where 2009 Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition winner Catherine Carter, as well as the poets whose work received Honorable Mentions in the contest, will read.
As always, the season will culminate in the Network's Fall Conference, November 20–22 at the Holiday Inn SunSpree Resort on Wrightsville Beach, with keynote speaker Cassandra King. Registration will open in September.
The North Carolina Writers' Network's 2008 Elizabeth Daniels Squire Summer Writing Residency was held last weekend at Queens University of Charlotte. 32 writers got to spend three days writing, reading other's writing, working on writing, and talking about writing.
"I'm overwhelmed at how well the weekend went for me," attendee John Minter said. "This workshop was truly a success. It is one I will always remember."
Geography Is Destiny by Madelon Sheff
iUniverse$11.95, paperback / $3.99, e-bookISBN: 978-1-4917-3303-5May, 2014Nonfiction: MemoirAvailable from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
A series of essays with a bittersweet flavor that chronicles the author's experiences living in three distinct areas of the United States. Where you live determines your lifestyle and the people you will encounter.
Maddy takes us on a journey from the Bronx, New York to South Florida and then to North Carolina. In a series of essays divided into four sections, she reveals her memories and experiences. Along the way, she shares some first-hand knowledge of bereavement, widowhood, moving, and coping.
Madelon Sheff is a former Literacy Specialist and Staff Developer. She is a devoted and doting grandmother who believes strongly in keeping active and making a contribution to the community. Among her interests are volunteering, Mah Jongg, Bridge, Music, Art, Scrabble, and Travel. The current senior dating scene is another interest.
Dream the Dawn by Jon Michael Riley
Dry Stack Media$24, paperback / $4.99, e-bookISBN: 978-0-9913934-0-4July, 2014Fiction: Environmental Thriller / ActionAvailable from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
"Jon Michael Riley's Irish love story, mixed with riveting suspense, makes for a compelling read, leaving your spellbound."—Bryan Robinson, author of Limestone Gumption
"Jon Michael Riley dreams the dawn with the eye of a photographer, the passion of an environmentalist, and the soul of a lover. His delicious descriptions of Ireland are the setting for an intricate Robin Hood caper and a heartfelt love story."—Vicki Lane, author of the Elizabeth Goodweather Appalachian mysteries
Devastated by the death of both his father and a lover, New York photographer Channey Moran accepts an easy assignment in Ireland. He soon becomes accidentally enmeshed in a bizarre ship hijacking by eco-mercenaries led by an eccentric ex-CIA operative who fascinates the world's news media while horrifying Big Energy.
Local photographer Glennie MacDonald searches the high seas for Channey and finds him moments from drowning. Seeing in him a kindred soul—one she now loves—Glennie nurses him back to life as Ireland erupts in chaos trying to find the allusive leader and his men.
A veteran New York studio and location photographer with work syndicated worldwide by Getty Images, Jon and his wife Catherine relocated to a quiet mountain cove outside of Asheville, NC. After the publication of The Irish File—Images from a Land of Grace, Jon found himself in a health-related situation where photography had become less possible, so began writing, attending writers workshops and conferences, as well as nurturing his interest in Irish history. In addition to three novels completed, Jon is adding to an already finished illustrated book on the Sacred Ireland as well as the third book in the Channey Moran series.
What Came Next by Sybil Austin Skakle
Westbow Press$17.95, paperback / $3.99, e-bookISBN: 978-4980-2781-0April, 2014MemoirAvailable from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
What Came Next is the story of a widow's loves and lives after the death of her husband of thirty-three years. She joins what is equivalent to the local online social groups of today and meets two men whom inhabit her story. She marries Sir Charles of New York, divorces him after seven years, and finally meets the other, Cowpoke, face-to-face in Kansas City, Missouri. He is dying. Family and involvement in a legal suit concerning family land are part of her story, as well. Her greatest struggle is with her own conscience, as she seeks to find her own peace without hurting either man or compromising her love of God and her desire to please him.
Sybil Austin Skakle, born January 10, 1926, in Hatteras, North Carolina, graduated from Hatteras High School in 1943 and from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1949 with a BS Pharmacy degree. Employed as a hospital pharmacist for twenty-three years, she retired in 1990 and began to write and publish books: 2001, Searchings, a book of poetry; 2002, Confessions of an Outer Banks Filly, stories of growing up on the Outer Banks of North Carolina; 2009, Valley of the Shadow, a journey through grief. Her latest is What Came Next, a memoir. A church school teacher and a volunteer for her church choir and a local non-profit entertainment group, she enjoys travel, music, reading, and people. Widowed, she lives in the same house where she raised three sons, beginning in 1958, with husband Don in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
A Lake of Light and Clouds by Terri Kirby Erickson
Press 53$14.95, paperbackISBN: 978-1-941209-02-8April, 2014PoetryAvailable from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
"Nothing could be more natural than enjoying Terri Kirby Erickson's poetry, so colloquial, so everyday in its subjects, and yet so penetrating. Her poems are the kind we share with special friends, and this new volume is so full of gems, I'll have plenty of gifts to go around for years to come."—Theodore Wiprud, composer and Vice President, Education, New York Philharmonic
"Terri Kirby Erickson, to adapt a phrase from the epigraph by Sharon Randall in A Lake of Light and Clouds, reflects the light she has been given. A skillful poet with a compassionate heart, she is not stingy with this light. She shines it on people she sees, people like Frank and Alice or 'The Man Who Cuts His Grass with Nail Scissors'; gifts from the natural world, including birds and orchids; places as varied as a Waffle House and Västerås, Sweden; material objects, including red tractors and ice cream trucks; and experiences with urologists, hospitals, and family members or friends. T.S. Eliot would call what she does mastering the objective correlative. I call it incarnating light. As Erickson shares images and experiences in her richly textured poems, she invites her readers into her own psyche, a place where we are all likely to feel accepted and warm."—Felicia Mitchell, author of The Cleft of the Rock
"Terri Kirby Erickson writes poetry about the real stuff, engagingly, with sympathy and an open eye."—Peter Tork, of blues band Shoe Suede Blues, and former member of The Monkees
"A Lake of Light and Clouds reaffirms that Terri Kirby Erickson has a Poet's Soul and it makes us see everyday things with new eyes and gratitude that beauty is not the exception but the rule of Life."—Jill Conner Browne, The Sweet Potato Queen and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love and Fat is the New 30
Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of four collections of poetry, including In the Palms of Angels (Press 53, 2011), winner of three international awards, and her newest collection, A Lake of Light and Clouds (Press 53, 2014). Telling Tales of Dusk (Press 53, 2009) was #23 on the Poetry Foundation Contemporary Best Sellers List in 2010. Her work has appeared in the 2013 Poet's Market, former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry (a poem from A Lake of Light and Clouds has just been selected to feature in this column in 2015, which makes two poems he has chosen to highlight), North Carolina Literary Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Muse India, The Christian Science Monitor, JAMA, Verse Daily, storySouth, and many others, and has won numerous honors and awards. She was awarded the 2013 Leidig Lectureship at Emory and Henry College, and has taught poetry for the continuing education program at Salem College as well as workshops at Brevard College, Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania, and various public schools, libraries, and other venues. She lives in Lewisville, North Carolina, with her husband of many years, surrounded by a wide assortment of birds, squirrels, chipmunks, and a family of extremely shy groundhogs. Visit her website at www.terrikirbyerickson.com for more information about her work!
Not Born Here: Stories from Marsden N.C. by Dennis Sinar
Knowledgeworks123 Press$9.99, paperback / $4.99, e-bookISBN: 978-0-991006816June, 2014Fiction: RegionalAvailable from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
"Written by a Yankee but filled with southern charm, Not Born Here embraces the heart of southern culture and tradition with humorous and heart-warming stories. Sinar's characters jump off the page with telling details and the cadence of the south in an affectionate nod to his adopted home…"—Marni Graff, award-winning author of The Nora Tierney Mysteries
"Sinar captures the unique voice and rich color of yesterday's Coastal Carolina people, rivaling Patsy Moore Ginns's recounts of Carolina life in her book Rough Weather Makes Good Timber. Each unique story features characters from the fictitious town of Marsden who offer the reader a glimpse into their own unique life experiences. A witty, colorful preservation of local flavor, uniqueness and language spun by a master storyteller."—Angela Beach Silverthorne, award-winning co-author of Depression Cookies
"Dennis Sinar is a transplanted Yankee whose book, Not Born Here, has captured the experience of encountering a culture and a use of the English language foreign to his own. He has met these characters and their stories with a relish and kindness, retelling them so that we can share with him the sounds, tastes, textures, and visuals that enrich the heritage we Southerners take for granted. You will smile, laugh out loud, and maybe find yourself in some of his characters and their attitudes toward life and home."—Doris Schneider, author of Borrowed Things
Collection of short stories about southern characters in the fictional town of Marsden, N.C. Humor, foibles, and character back stories about residents of Marsden and how they approach daily living. The format is of a section introducing the characters, followed by a section that tells their stories: finding relationships with southern men to burying a dead cat in the winter.
Dennis Sinar is a retired academic physician who is a listener. His stories start with a nugget of truth, bounce a round a bit in his head, and emerge when they're ready. He publishes a travel blog of his adventures in Alaska laying stone on houses, studying Eastern Medicine in Nepal, and refinishing antique furniture in Pennsylvania among other topics.
Undertow of Vengeance by Joseph L.S. Terrell
Bella Rosa Books$14.95, paperback / $5.99, e-bookISBN: 978-1-62268-097-9June, 2014Fiction: MysteryAvailable at your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
When the bodies of a man and woman are found slay in the Outer Banks' Nags Head Woods by crime writer Harrison Weaver, an investigation is launched that proves deadly for others—and potentially so for Weaver and two of his friends. He must act fast to safe the three of them from a deranged killer.
This is the fourth in the Harrison Weaver mystery series set at North Carolina's Outer Banks.
Joseph L.S. Terrell is the published author of eight books, including four mysteries set at the Outer Banks. With a writing career spanning more than forty years, Terrell has published in magazines, newspapers, radio, television, and public relations. A graduate in English from UNC-Chapel Hill, Terrell was awarded a full scholarship to the famed University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
The Only Sounds We Make by Lee Zacharias
Hub City Press$16.95, paperback / $9.99, e-bookISBN: 978-1-938235009May, 2014Memoir / EssaysAvailable at your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
"In Lee Zacharias' elegant and varied essay collection, we enter a world where memory's soundtrack plays quietly beneath every landscape, event, and portrait. Though hers is a life 'coded' by sound, these essays showcase her training in photography. Even in the darkest rooms of this book—black widow spiders, vultures, a father killed by his own hand, a mother 'no daughter could have cherished…enough'—there is light to read by. 'What breaks my heart,' Zacharias writes of her beloved dog Ollie, who literally eats the author's past by chowing down on photo albums and other memorabilia, is 'the beauty of his attention.' Of this essayist's many gifts, perhaps her greatest is the beauty of her attention. Reading The Only Sounds We Make, we lucky readers learn, as the essayist has learned, 'how to read light.'"—Rebecca McClanahan, author of The Tribal Knot and The Riddle Song
"Poised on nothing but the air of memory and love, Lee Zacharias' The Only Sounds We Make is a stunning safari of a collection, spanning three generations of family, moving us cross-country, from land to water to land, surveying the damages of culture, the gifts of light and language, the miracles of the individual mind. Zacharias pitches her tent at the crossroads of the natural world and the moral universe, and what she gives us is observation and insight to match the best of Annie Dillard, Wendell Berry, and Diane Ackerman. You cannot hold these stories in your hand. They are at once too heavy and too light. But at daybreak, opening the flap of your tent, you might catch the poet's vision for Zacharias has given hers flight."—Elaine Neil Orr, author of A Different Sun
The Only Sounds We Make is a memoir in the form of personal essays that is deeply concerned with the way language, image, and memory give a life coherence and meaning. Fascinated by the natural world, Zacharias turns to creatures whose language we cannot fathom, from spiders to vultures to dogs, and the mute record of the land through time, to discover what those powers mean. These thirteen deeply metaphorical essays are both intensely personal and vitally concerned with the larger world, including the kingdom beyond our ken. Exploring subjects as diverse as her father's suicide, the great migration that changed the racial composition of Chicago's South Side, the nature of light, and the geology of the Grand Canyon, Zacharias writes with grace, precision, and candor about the experiences that shape our humanity and our relationships, to our parents, to our children, and to past, present, and future.
Lee Zacharias was born in Chicago. A graduate of Indiana University, Hollins College, and the University of Arkansas, she has taught at Princeton University and the University of North Carolina Greensboro, where for a decade she edited The Greensboro Review. She has held writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. Her first novel, Lessons, won North Carolina's Sir Walter Raleigh Award, her second novel, At Random, was a finalist in literary fiction for both the 2013 International Book Award and the 2013 National Indie Excellence Award, and her nonfiction, which has appeared in such journals as Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and The Gettysburg Review, has been reprinted in The Best American Essays. She is a photographer as well as the author of three books of fiction.
The Speed of Our Lives by Grace C. Ocasio
BlazeVOX Books$16, paperbackISBN: 978-1-609641719June, 2014PoetryAvailable from the publisher and www.Amazon.com
"Grace Ocasio's poems embrace their subjects with a photographic clarity and a chic sense of style. Whether she is mining 'the unmistakable depth' of Garbo's face, or musing in wonder at Angela Davis' hair, 'more lavish/ than a Carmen Miranda headpiece,' she taps into the iconic power of her images in order to draw strength from them and offer it to us. These bracing poems celebrate everything from nature to history, to the family, to the famous—and in each, she discovers the music and meaning that lets them bloom in all their strangeness and surprise."—Elaine Equi
"These are wonderously wrought and craftwise poems!—but 'crafty' too. Grace Ocasio's new collection, The Speed of Our Lives, is cleverly disguised in the formal and biographical. Within, you'll hear Holiday's voice, Garland's, but, most of all, listen for Grace Ocasio's marked song of rugged spoken-out-ness. I warn you: these are smart poems, but the facts ain't always the truth, so watch out for this poet's storied, brave, slant-light."&mdsah;Kate Knapp Johnson
"One has only to read the Acknowledgements Page to realize the astonishing breadth of Grace Ocasio's interests and the variety of places her work has been published as well as awards she has won. The Table of Contents is equally impressive, showing poems embracing myth, history ancient and modern, happenings worldwide and close to home, characters from many cultures. The first section alone focuses on Ruth and Naomi, Esther, Pocahontas, Anne Frank, Audrey Hepburn, Angela Davis, Michelle Obama, Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, and Alondra de la Parra. Research can provide facts about these people, but only the powerful imagination of the poet can recreate their world and take us back with her into their lives."—Ann Deagon
The collection The Speed of Our Lives consists of four sections: Sheroes, She Revolutionary, Princes and Privates, and Patriots. The first section features famous women (celebrities and non-celebrities alike). The second section explores the poet's relationship to others whether strangers or family members. More varied in perspective than the first two sections, the third section focuses primarily on historical figures (all male) as well as animals and plants. In the fourth and final section, the poet uses race as her subject matter, examining how race has impacted the lives of black men in particular, from the famous to the not-so-famous (members of her family).
A former two-year college English instructor, Poet/Performer Grace C. Ocasio lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband, Edwin, and her daughter, Chloe. Twice a finalist for the Rash Award in Poetry (2010, 2013), Grace C. Ocasio is a recipient of the 2014 North Carolina Arts Council-funded Regional Artist Project Grant Award. She won honorable mention in the 2012 James Applewhite Poetry Prize, the Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka Prize in Poetry in 2011, and was a scholarship recipient to the 2011 Napa Valley Writers' Conference. She also won second prize in the James Larkin Pearson free verse category of an annual poetry contest sponsored by the Poetry Council of North Carolina in 2008.
Her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Earth's Daughters, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Court Green, phati'tude Literary Magazine, Obsidian, Blast Furnace Press, Broad River Review, the North Carolina Literary Review, and other journals. Her chapbook, Hollerin from This Shack, was published by Ahadada Books in 2009. She has also published essays in other publications including The Charlotte Observer and InterRace. She is a Soul Mountain Retreat fellow and Frost Place alumna. She also served as a reviewer for the online writers' resource, The Review Review in 2008 and 2009.
Currently, she serves as a contributing editor for Backbone Poetry Journal. She is a member of the Association of Writing and Writing Programs, the Carolina African American Writers' Collective, the North Carolina Poetry Society, the North Carolina Writers' Network, and the Charlotte Writers' Club. She has read at venues that include the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts and Culture in Charlotte, North Carolina; North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina; the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut; the East Bay Meeting House in Charleston, South Carolina; UNC Chapel Hill's Bull's Head Bookshop in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and the Sensoria Festival at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina. She received her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, her MA in English from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and her BA in Print Journalism and English from Howard University, graduating cum laude.
Lucky Bastard by Gary V. Powell
Main Street Rag $15.95, paperback ISBN: 978-1-59948-382-5 December, 2012 Fiction Available from the publisher or at www.Amazon.com
Currently available at a pre-release discount of $9.50 from Main Street Rag!
"A delightful read you won't want to put down! Gary V. Powell has created a working class world rich with suspenseful adventure, alive with humor and heart wrenching pathos. The world of this novel teems with original, hard scrabble characters grappling with a surprising array of life's inevitable crises. I loved listening in on their quick and inventive banter. Powell''s protagonist, Jimmy McClean is a complex man of our time who has the power to make everyone in his world feel better; he stole this readers heart!" —Teresa Burns Gunther, Founder of Lakeshore Writers Workshop in Oakland, California
"Mr. Powell uses words like a master artist uses oil and brushes to paint vivid pictures of his characters, their problems, and their strengths. He makes readers feel as if they've personally known these people for years—to feel pity for some and hatred for others. He also manages to slip in a bit of social commentary, without sounding preachy, while making readers anxious to find out what happens next."—Mr. Coyle, author of The Dream Merchant of Lisbon, No Game for Amateurs, and Diamonds And Deceit: The Search For The Missing Romanov Dynasty Jewels
"This well-paced novel is filled with sharply drawn characters, dry witticisms, and a delightful sprinkling of irreverence. Through his protagonist, Jim McLean, Powell offers an intriguing blend of biting social commentary and quirky, poignant insights. Lucky Bastard kept me guessing… and turning pages… to the very end." —Bob Strother, author of Scattered, Smothered, and Covered
Set on the eve of The Great Recession near the shores of fictional Lake Catawba, prize-winning author Gary V. Powell gives us Lucky Bastard, a debut novel that is part rollicking road-trip thriller, part love story, and part character study. After landing the first big customer for his new handyman business and wrangling a date with sweet Becky Newberry, Vietnam vet Jimmy McLean believes things are looking up-until a quarter ton of home-grown marijuana mysteriously appears on his boat, his ex-wife's teenage niece, Nora, disappears with a stranger on a motorcycle, and old buddy, Harley Hopewell, is arrested for a homicide he may or may not have committed. Haunted by lingering dreams of war, Jimmy struggles to create a better life for himself while remaining loyal to old friends and family. Before it's over, he faces down a ruthless drug dealer, puts his life on the line with a famous gangster rapper, and fixes a few broken lives with the same care he fixes a house in need of repair.
Gary V. Powell's stories have appeared in several print and online literary journals including moonShine Review, The Thomas Wolfe Review, Blue Lake Review, and The Newport Review. In addition, several of his stories have placed or been selected as finalists in national contests. Most recently, his story "Home Free" won an Honorable Mention in the 2011 Newport Review Flash Fiction Contest and his story "Super Nova" received an Honorable Mention in the 2012 Press 53 Awards. He has work forthcoming at Fiction 365 and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.
He's working on a second novel, tentatively entitled, Whole Life.
He lives near the shores of Lake Norman, North Carolina, with his beautiful wife and amazing son.
The Renegades by Tom Young
Putnam Adult $26.95 hardcover / $12.99 e-book ISBN: 978-0-399-15-8469 July, 2012 Fiction Available at your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
The Mullah's Storm and Silent Enemy, Tom Young's first two novels based on his own military background, received enormous praise. The Renegades is his deepest, richest, most exciting novel yet, filled with remarkable adventure and a bone-deep understanding of the men and women in Afghanistan: Americans, Afghans, military, and civilian alike.
A major earthquake ravages Afghanistan, and American troops rush to deliver aid, among them Afghan Air Force adviser Lieutenant Colonel Michael Parson, and his interpreter, Sergeant Major Sophia Gold. The devastation facing them is like nothing they've ever seen, however—and it's about to get worse.
A Taliban splinter group, Black Crescent, is conducting its own campaign—shooting medical workers, downing helicopters, slaughtering anyone who dares to accept aid. With the U.S. drawing down and coalition forces spread thin, it is up to Parson, Gold, and Parson's Afghan aircrews to try to figure out how to strike back, but they're short of supplies, men, experience, and information, and meanwhile the terrorists are nowhere…and everywhere.
The Renegades is a novel of constant surprise and suspense, a book, in the words of the Dallas Morning News about The Mullah's Storm, "that's got authenticity stamped on every scene and a narrative drive that won't let you go. A terrific addition to contemporary war fiction."
Tom Young has logged nearly 4,000 hours for the Air National Guard in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, and elsewhere. The author of The Mullah's Storm and Silent Enemy, Young has studied writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Sewanee Writers' Conference, among other places, and lives in Alexandria, Virginia.
Legacy of Honor Volume One: Giulia Goes to War by Joan Leotta
Desert Breeze Publishing $3.99, e-book ISBN: 978-1-61252-196-1 July, 2012 FictionAvailable from the publisher, Barnes & Noble, or www.Amazon.com
World War II brought many young women into large cities where they worked at jobs previously held by men. Often the young women lived in rooming houses away from their parents, unheard of for Italian-American girls of the era. Giulia breaks out to work in Wilmington where she is assigned to a special unit in the Wilmington shipyard—one that deals with secret technology to help us win the war.
Her cousin Carmie and friend Helen introduce her to another world she has never seen—dances. At the USO, Giulia meets John O'Shea, a handsome but non-Italian officer. Their romance, fueled by the war's exigencies and the capture of a spy who threatens the secret work of the shipyard brings Giulia to another crossroads in her life. She must choose between obeying her parents decree that she marry only another Italian, or marrying the man she loves.
The story is full of details about life on the home front in World War II and is suitable for young adults as well as adult readers.
For more than twenty years, Joan Leotta's articles have appeared in magazines and newspapers and websites all over the country including the Washington Post, AAA World, Women's Day, and more. Currently she freelances regularly for the Wilmington Star, Myrtle Beach Sun Times, and www.disability-marketing.com. She lives in Calabash, NC. Visit her website at www.joanleotta.com and her blog at www.joanleotta.wordpress.com.
Canebrake Beach: A Novella and Four Stories by John M. Keith
NewSouth Books $17.95, paperback ISBN: 978-1-60306-231-2 June, 2012 Fiction Available at your local bookstore, from the publisher, or www.Amazon.com
Four tenant families, some black and some white, lived on the farm owned by author John Keith's family as a child. Although no one who grew up on the farm except for him was active in the civil rights movement, in Canebrake Beach he imagines what would happened to members of black and white families as they progress from the Jim Crow era and beyond. The other short stories in the book explore friendships, relationships, and conflicts of white and black people in the South at various intervals over a span of seventy years.
Bread Upon the Water by Deanna K. Klingel
Rafka Press$12.95, paperbackISBN-13: 978-0977962853 June, 2012Young Adult BiographyAvailable from the publisher
"Father Tiến Dương's life is an amazing and inspiring story of perseverance in following God's call in the face of severe trials and testings. Father Dương pursued his vocation to the priesthood, knowing God would always be faithful. The kind priest who taught the young Tiến Dương in sixth grade gave him sound advice for his life's journey: 'Trust God. Always, trust God.'"--Most Reverend Peter J. Jugis, Bishop of Charlotte
This is the true story of Father Tiến Dương, a Catholic priest who grew up in the strife and hardship of Communist Vietnam. Follow young Tiến's riveting tale as he deals with not-so-distant mortar fire in a Catholic boarding school, his eventual escape from Vietnam, struggles in various refugee camps, and eventual migration to the United States.
Deanna Klingel was a child in a small town in the 1950s. It was a time when kids amused themselves with paper, scissors, magazines, paste, crayons, and books, while listening to the radio. That's when she wrote and illustrated her first books, lacing the pages together with shoe strings. Writing wasn't something she dreamed of doing "when I grow up;" it was something she was already doing. She wrote plays for her classmates, wrote for the school newspapers, yearbook, tons of letters of correspondence with relatives and pen pals. She recently found a yellowed poem she wrote for the Michigan State University newspaper. Don't remember it, but there it is! After she had kids (7) she wrote puppet plays and stories for them, edited school newsletters, and projects, plays and news for Scouts and church. She wrote all the time. She made scrapbooks, diaries, and kept journals. She hadn't figured out that she was a writer, or an author. That didn't happen until after the children were grown and she began writing travel books for grand children. Then one day it happened. She woke up and said, "I have a story in my head, and I think it wants to be a book. I guess I'll try to write a book."
Solomon's Throne by Jennings Wright
Jennings Wright $13.95, paperback / $2.99, e-book ISBN-13: 978-0985784010 July, 2012 Fiction Available from www.Amazon.com
An impenetrable safe is breached and a secret artifact is stolen. Containing information that could change the course of the world, its desperate owner sends Gideon Quinn, his head of security, and Gideon's wife Rei, an art preservationist, to find it at any cost. What they discover is a clue to the lost throne of King Solomon, the real object of the theft. They are thrust out on an adventure that leads them halfway around the world. Following letters left by a Jesuit in 1681, they must weave through ancient sites along the Portuguese Spice Route, keeping ahead of a secret militant order that is determined to beat them to Solomon's Throne. Filled with fast paced action and having broad appeal, Solomon's Throne is an ingenious treasure hunt adventure that sweeps the reader around the globe in a race against time.
Born and raised in Rockledge, Florida, Jennings Wright spent her early years reading anything she could get her hands on, when she wasn't spending time in and on the water. She won a prize in the 6th grade for her writing. Jennings attended the University of Tampa, graduating with a BA in Political Science, and almost enough credits for BAs in both English and History. She spent time over the years doing various kinds of script doctoring, business writing, editing, and teaching writing, but mostly having and raising her family, homeschooling her children, owning and running a business with her husband, and starting a non-profit to Uganda. Thanks to a crazy idea called NaNoWriMo, Jennings got back into creative writing in 2011 and hasn't stopped since. She's written three novels and a screenplay, with more ideas on the drawing board. She currently lives in North Carolina with her husband, a political writer, and two children, and travels extensively.
Hats Off! to NCWN communications director Charles "LC" Fiore whose short story "In Limbo" appears in the inaugural issue of The Ottawa Object.
Hats Off! to Marni Graff whose novel The Green Remains, book two in The Nora Tierney English Mysteries, has won First Place for "Best Classic British Cozy" in The Mystery & Mayhem Awards 2014 from Chanticleer Media.
Hats Off! to Vicki L. Weavil whose novel Crown of Ice is now a series. Her publisher, Month9Books, has acquired Scepter of Fire and Orb of Light, two companion novels to Crown of Ice. Scepter of Fire will be published in 2016, publication date of Orb of Light is currently planned for 2017. The two books continue the story and include the major characters from Crown of Ice, but are each told by a different protagonist. Also inspired by Hans Christian Andersen, Scepter of Fire is influenced by "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," and Orb of Light by "The Little Match Girl."
Hats Off! to Joan Leotta whose flash fiction piece "A Glimpse of Glory" is forthcoming in September's Indiana Voice Journal.
Hats Off! to Janet Joyner of Winston-Salem who won the Poetry category of the 2015 Winston-Salem Writers Flying South anthology contest for her poem, "Breast Stroke." NCWN board member Alice Osborn of Raleigh received an Honorable Mention for her poem, "Entreaty to Young Editors."
Hats Off! to Hampton Hofer of Raleigh and Gary Bolick of Clemmons who won Third Place in the Short Story and Creative Nonfiction/Memoir categories, respectively, in the 2015 Winston-Salem Writers Flying South anthology contest. Hofer's story was "Hurricane Season." Bolick's essay was "Felix and the Silver Surfer."
Hats Off! to Jennifer Bean Bower of Winston-Salem whose story "Through Tide, Time, and Turmoil" won First Place in the Flash Fiction category of the 2015 Winston-Salem Writers Flying South anthology contest.
Hats Off! to Joan Leotta whose poem "The Moth" was accepted for the new Janes Boy Press publication Ishka Bibble. It will appear in the October issue.
Hats Off! to Paula Martinac and Mary Meinelt, who were both named finalists in the 2015 Prime Number Magazine Awards: Paula for her short story "Eds and Meds," and Mary for her essay "Nothing to Be Afraid Of—Rachel's Story."
Hats Off! to Denise S. Cline whose short story "Plow Under" won Second Prize in the 2015 Prime Number Magazine Award for Short Fiction. Publication will be in Prime Number Magazine #79 in October.
Hats Off! to Kathryn Kirkpatrick, winner of the 2015 Brockman-Campbell Book Award for her poetry collection, Her Small Hands Were Not Beautiful. She'll receive $200 and an invitation to read at the annual meeting of the North Carolina Poetry Society. Anthony S. Abbott's collection, The Angel Dialogues, received an Honorable Mention. The Brockman-Campbell Book Award is given annually by the NCPS for a book-length volume of poetry published the previous year by a native-born North Carolinian or current resident who has lived in the state for at least three years at the time of publication.
Hats Off! to Joan Leotta whose poem "Joan Gabrielle—A Handy Name" appears as part of the "All About My Name" Poetry Series from Silver Birch Press.
Hats Off! to Jeremy B. Jones whose memoir Bearwallow (John F. Blair, Publisher) won silver in Foreword Review's INDIEFAB 2014 Book of the Year Award in Autobiography & Memoir.
Becalmed by Normandie Fischer
Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas $14.95, paperback / $3.00, e-book ISBN: 978-1938499616 July, 2013 Fiction Available from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
When a Southern woman with a broken heart falls for a widower with a broken boat, it's anything but smooth sailing.
Tadie Longworth doesn't spend much time worrying that she's turning into one of Beaufort, North Carolina's, spinsters. She has a gift shop full of her own jewelry designs and a sweet little sailboat to take her mind off the guy who got away. But now he's back—with the fashion-plate wife he picked instead of Tadie—and he's hitting on her again.
When widower Will Merritt limps into town with a broken sailboat and a perky seven-year-old daughter, he offers the perfect distraction—until that distraction turns into fascination when Tadie offers shelter during a hurricane. Only, Will has sworn never to let another woman in his life. Any day now, he's going to finish those repairs, and that ship's going to sail—straight out of Tadie's life.
Normandie Fischer had the best of several worlds: a Southern heritage, access to schooling in the DC area (which meant lots of cultural adventures), and several years of sculpture studies in Italy. It might have been better for her if she'd used all these opportunities more wisely, but it's possible that the imperfect and the unwise also add fodder for the artist and the writer.
Her life changed radically when she married the love of her life at an age when some would have said she was over the hill and way past her prime. (Clichés often speak the truth, don't they?) A lifelong sailor, she was delighted to find that Michael also longed to cruise lovely waters, which is what they did from Northern CA to Mexico, spending too-few years in the incomparable Sea of Cortez. Sea Venture, their 50' ketch, is back home in North Carolina now because Normandie's mama needed care. Still, it's gorgeous there, too, and she can write and edit from home as easily as she could on the boat.
Beaver Soul by Judy Hogan
Finishing Line Press $12, paperback ISBN: 978-1-62229-324-7 August, 2013 Poetry Available from the publisher
Beaver Soul is Judy Hogan's love song for Russia. The poems begin along the shore of the Haw River, and move to Russia. The Russian translator said, "Her own soul in her poems is associated with the image of the beaver–a builder, patient and persistent in its work and in taking care of its family. Everything that takes place in the beaver's life–its joys and sorrows, its misfortunes and successes–corresponds to events in her own life. The motto of Judy Hogan is creating and overcoming."
Judy Hogan helped found the North Carolina Writers' Network (1983-87) as well as Carolina Wren Press (1976-91), and co-edited the Hyperion Poetry Journal (1970-81). She has published five poetry books and two prose works with small presses. Beaver Soul was originally published in Russian by the Kostroma Writers Organization (1997). She has taught creative writing since 1974. Her first mystery, Killer Frost, was a finalist in the St. Martin's Malice Domestic contest and was published by Mainly Murder Press in 2012. Farm Fresh and Fatal is due out October 1, 2013. She loves to write by water, including the Haw, the Teign in Devon, and the Mezha River in Russia. She farms and writes in Moncure, NC.
Her website is www.judyhogan.home.mindspring.com.
Salt in the Sugar Bowl by Angela Belcher Epps
Main Street Rag $12, paperback ISBN: 978-1-59948-402-0 June, 2013 Fiction Available from the publisher or www.Amazon.com
Sophia Sawyer has lost all the sweetness in her life. Her husband barely has enough time and money to take care of their six children but when two children from his extramarital affair are brought to home, there's no joy left in her marriage. She leaves her children thinking that while her husband may turn out to be a better provider if she wasn't around. Author Angela Belcher Epps explores what happens to these children left behind in her compelling novella, Salt in the Sugar Bowl.
Angela Belcher Epps, an English teacher at an alternative high school, explores the complexities of life—including love, family relationships, loss and abandonment. She received a bachelor's degree in English from Hofstra University and a master's degree in English/Creative Writing from New York University. Her stories and essays have appeared in several publications including Essence, Ladies' Home Journal magazines and Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora literary journal.
A Deadly Provenance by Joanna A. McKethan
Amazon Digital Services, Inc. $5.99, e-book ISBN: 978-1-940132-006 June, 2013 Fiction Available from www.Amazon.com
The world Lexi came from was safe, years and miles removed from international intrigue. That all changed when she married into European landed gentry. A Deadly Provenance captures a 1970s snapshot of an altogether different reality, which forms the backdrop for a fast-moving redirection of Lexi's exotic, yet ordinary, new life, until unresolved conspiracies from her in-laws' past surface and burst in to threaten Lexi's marriage to Jon and their life together. Without heavy historical detail, the Cold War ambiance weaves masterfully in and out of their characters' lives, in just the right amounts of a cultured and historical accuracy, based on experiences drawn from the author's life in Upper Bavaria and Lower Austria during that period. Lexi, the transplanted Southern blue blood, must face down compound challenges of culture, language, new love, an accident, in-law drama, and now, espionage. Injected into this mix are shadows from her past, thought long since left behind and of no consequence.
As this mix reaches critical mass, the demure NC Magnolia produces a steely side that amazes herself and puts everyone else off guard. Lexi simply refuses to roll over and play dead, and the reader is quickly sucked into this maelstrom with her.
Joanna McKethan was born in Dunn, North Carolina, to parents of English and Scottish descent, and lives on original property from said ancestors just miles down the road from where the first Scottish settlers entered the area on the Cape Fear River in the 1700s. A fine artist, professional in watercolor and oils, she has taught art from her private studio j'Originals for thirty-two years to thousands of students. She exhibits and wins prizes nationally. A poet as well, she is published in literary magazines and anthologies and has won Writer's Digest's First Place in Unrhymed Poetry Award. She loves the South which forms part of her books, whether set in Estonia (Lady in White) or in North Carolina (A Holiday Folly). Her characters see high-snd-spy adventures in love and danger in castles and stately homes here and abroad.
Obsession by JoAnne Keltner
Musa Publishing $3.99, e-book ISBN: 978-1-61937-502-4 January, 2013 Fiction—YA Available from the publisher, B&N, and www.Amazon.com
Abby had the perfect suburban life: shopping sprees at the mall, a pool in her backyard, a dream bedroom, a best friend…That is, until her family moved to the backwoods of Wisconsin.
Abby plans to prove this backwoods dump is no place for a thirteen-year-old. So when her parents hire a carpenter and his son, Greg, she hangs out with the older boy to make her parents worry. But Greg turns out to be a total creep, and although Abby tells him she doesn't like him, he continues to make her life miserable, watching her, trying to get close to her, threatening her.
What's creepier is the mysterious brown-haired girl that keeps appearing and disappearing without saying a word. When Abby finds the girl's old diary in the outbuilding, she learns that they share a common enemy, Greg.
Will they share the same fate too?
JoAnne Keltner was born on the South Side of Chicago. As an only child and avid daydreamer, she spent hours alone in her narrow backyard, which she imagined to be everything from an alien planet to the Antarctic. Her earliest memory of wanting to be a writer was when she was in the first grade and created, with crayons and folded sheets of Manila paper, a picture book about squirrels. Today, she is a novelist and technical editor. She currently lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. Obsession is her first published novel.
Tanner Turbeyfill and the Moon Rocks by Anna Browning
Diamond DMT Publishing $19.95, hardcover ISBN:978-0983763864 May, 2013 Children's Available from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
Tanner Turbeyfill has always wanted to travel to the moon to dig up his very own moon rocks. Much to his surprise, that trip would come sooner than he could have imagined. One night, while documenting a full moon from his tree house Observatory, Tanner notices the moon starting to brighten into a blue color. The mysterious blue light transforms the tree house into a spaceship! Join Tanner on an adventure that takes him to the moon and back.
This beautifully illustrated story includes actual moon facts direct from Tanner's Moon Journal, an illustration of our Solar System, and a narrative audio CD with an original song to learn. Kids everywhere will love it!
Anna Browning grew up in the mountains of western North Carolina. She began writing in 2010 while working in a preschool classroom. She is a graduate of Western Carolina University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. It was at UNCC that Anna studied children's literature and fell in love with the genre. She lives in Waynesville, NC, with her fat cat, Leo. Tanner Turbeyfill and the Moon Rocks is her first book: www.anna-browning.com.
America One: Return to Earth (Book 4) by T.I. Wade
TIWADE Books $7.97, e-book ASIN: B00E3HMSI8 July, 2013 Fiction Available at www.Amazon.com, www.bn.com, Kobo, and Smashwords
Ryan Richmond has dreamed about going to space since the age of seven. Reading space updates—and seeing pictures of Neil Armstrong on the lunar surface in National Geographic—was the ignition of this dream.
At nineteen he sold his first company and employed the remnants of the Russian Space Program, three of the best space brains in the world. In his twenties he founded and sold two more companies and hired the most outstanding scientists and engineers from the European Space Authority. During his thirties, after selling his third company, he invested heavily in Internet start-ups, like Google, netting billions. Then he patiently waited until NASA's shuttle program came to an end and contracted the best brains in the U.S. Space program.
Now, Ryan Richmond is in his fifties, has angered, fought with, and shot at many of the World's most powerful countries from Space, and is not welcome in the Northern Hemisphere.
Ryan doesn't really care, as he is millions of miles away, enjoying himself flying around the solar system, and about to return to Planet Earth.
T I Wade was born in Bromley, Kent, England in 1954. His father, a banker was promoted with his International Bank to Africa and the young family moved to Africa in 1956. The author grew up in Southern Rhodesia.
Once he had completed his mandatory military commitments, at twenty-one he left Africa to mature in Europe. He enjoyed Europe and lived in three countries: England, Germany and Portugal for fifteen years before returning to Africa; Cape Town in 1989. Here the author owned and ran a restaurant, a coffee manufacturing and retail business, flew a Cessna 210 around desolate southern Africa and finally got married in 1992. Due to the upheavals of the political turmoil in South Africa, the Wade family of three moved to the United States in 1996. Park City, Utah, was where his writing career began.
To date T I Wade has written eleven novels. The Author, his wife, and two teenage children currently live twenty miles south of Raleigh, North Carolina.
The Elephant with the Yellow Trunk by S. Lemon
AuthorHouse $15.99, paperback / $3.99, e-book ISBN: 978-1481720960 March, 2013 Children's Book Available at your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
A children's book to help inspire our children to respect others no matter their differences. Have you ever witnessed or been a part of bullying and taunting? The elephants at the same zoo as Ziggy tease him because he looks different, and has a yellow trunk. When a very nice elephant named Roger witnesses this taunting and bullying, he begins to talk to Ziggy and help him through the taunting that is being done by the other elephants.
S. Lemon was born in North Carolina. She obtained her Bachelor's degree from Winston-Salem State University and after graduation she spent several years working in corporate America. After a few years of employment, she decided to return to school to obtain another degree in Conflict and Peace Studies. It was during this time, the course of her employment, and juggling the role of a wife and mother to two daughters, that she found her passion and fell in love with writing.
Mrs. Lemon used writing to express her feelings and thoughts on everyday living and to give positive insight on how to enjoy life as we see it. She credits her inspiration and dedication to writing children's books to the love and respect of the innocence and youthfulness of being a child. Childhood is the most important time for a child to grow, learn, and enjoy life. With bullying and negative peer pressure at an all-time high, S. Lemon decided to utilize her talents and channel all of her efforts to reach out to the children who may be facing similar issues.
The Elephant with the Yellow Trunk takes issues such as taunting that may go on in schools and helps children apply these scenarios to everyday life and show them how to cope and essentially do what is right.
Bella Rosa Books$14.95, paperback / $5.99, e-book ISBN: 978-1622680399June, 2013FictionAvailable from your local bookstore or www.Amazon.com
Crime writer Harrison Weaver doesn't believe in coincidences--only messages that may not be decipherable at first. That's his feeling when, as he prepares to go kayaking at Buffalo City near the Outer Banks, he discovers the body of a nude young female, hogtied and very dead. The stark scene is especially eerie to him because a month earlier he had been assigned to write about the murder of another young woman who was found nude and hogtied in the backseat of her car in the mountains of North Carolina--400 miles away from Weaver's home at the coastal Outer Banks area. A lawman in the mountains told Weaver, "Up here we may shoot somebody, or stab 'em, or even backup over 'em with a pickup truck. But we don't never hogtie nobody. That's not our kind of killing." As Weaver and his SBI Agent friend attempt to track down the killer or killers, it becomes chillingly clear to Weaver that a young woman close to him could be the next victim...and it's a race against time to try to save her.
Joseph L.S. Terrell is the author of seven books, including a coming-of-age story set in Raleigh at the closing years of World War II and beyond, called Learning to Slow Dance. Recent mysteries set along North Carolina's Outer Banks are Tide of Darkness: "The Lost Colony" Theater Murders, and Overwash of Evil. The protagonist in both novels, true crime writer Harrison Weaver, came to the Outer Banks seeking peace and quiet, only to become involved in murder investigations that can cost him his life. Today Joseph makes his home in the Outer Banks of North Carolina where he spends much of his time writing the twists and plots for his next novel.
Hats Off! to Glenda Barrett whose poem "Afterwards" will be published in Coping magazine this September.
Hats Off! to Joe Morris who will have his poem "Evening Clock" published in the upcoming technology theme issue of The Indian River Review.
Hats Off! to Shuly Cawood whose essay "An Unexpected Light" won the 2014 Betty Gabehart Prize in nonfiction. This award is part of the Kentucky Women Writers Conference.
Hats Off! to Tom Wood, author of Vendetta Stone, who was interviewed by the late John Seigenthaler on A Word on Words. The segment aired on Nashville public television. The audio link is available here.
Hats Off! to Susan M. Steadman whose ten-minute play, "The Dress," was chosen for production at the Old Courthouse Theatre in Concord, NC, August 21-23. In "The Dress," Delia, an ecologically minded young woman, seeks the perfect wedding dress at a thrift shop but finds much more when Josh offers his assistance. The competition was for playwrights living in North and South Carolina.
Hats Off! to Terri Kirby Erickson whose poem "Ice Cream Truck" from her new collection, A Lake of Light and Clouds (Press 53), will be read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac. Also, U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser chose a poem from this collection to feature in his American Life in Poetry column in 2015, and another poem from this collection, "Red Tractor," will be featured on Verse Daily.
Hats Off! to Karen Paul Holmes whose poetry reading and discussion at Coffee with the Poet at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva is featured in their podcast.
Hats Off! to Chris Roerden whose essay "Pssst: Commit to Yourself" appears in Writes of Passage: Adventures on the Writer's Journey from Sisters in Crime. In this anthology, fifty-nine mystery authors offer the secrets that helped them navigate their success.
Hats Off! to Kim Church, author of the novel Byrd, who was featured in Writing and Wellness, the website of northwest imaginative fiction writer Colleen M. Story.
Hats Off! to Chris Roerden whose advice to writers, "Submitting Can Be Murder: Strategies for Survival," is part of the just-released Sisters in Crime anthology Breaking and Entering. This collection of succinct essays gives up-to-date advice on how to break into publishing with your mystery novel and includes more than fifty other commercially successful authors.
Hats Off! to North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee Elizabeth Spencer who won the $30,000 Rea Award for the Short Story for 2013.
Hats Off! to Flora Solomon whose novel, A Pledge of Silence, is finalist in the seventh annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. She won a publishing contract with Amazon's Lake Union Publishing, and is in the running for the Grand Prize. Amazon customers are invited to vote for the Grand Prize winner through July 18.
Hats Off! to Marilynn Barner Anselmi whose script, Found Objects, was named a semi-finalist in Firehouse Theatre's (Richmond, VA) Festival of New American Plays.
Hats Off! to Susan McNabb who is the newest weekly columnist writing for the Tryon Daily Bulletin, "The World's Smallest Daily Newspaper." McNabb's column, Tryon Diary, will highlight local events and people as she explores small town life after living in Los Angeles for nearly three decades.
Hats Off! to Bill Ramsey whose book Me Now - Who Next?: The Inspiring Story of a Traumatic Brain Injury Recovery is now available in audio, narrated by Scott R. Pollak.
Hats Off! to Catherine Carter whose poetry chapbook was selected as the winner in this year's Jacar Press competition. Joseph Millar was the Final Judge. "She has good diction and tone, a real subject and a great eye for the image, for the things of this world," Millar said. Carter teaches at Western Carolina University and has published two full-length poetry collections with LSU Press.
Hats Off! to Peggy Payne who shares her thoughts on Monica Lewinsky, the Immaculate Conception, and more in the Op-Ed, "A New Kind of Virginity," in The Washington Post. Payne is the author of three novels, including Cobalt Blue.
Hats Off! to Jim Tobalski whose story, "Musky-in-Law," is featured in Not Your Mother's Book…on Family, now out from Publishing Syndicate, containing sixty funny stories that confirm families aren't always perfect. "Musky-in-law" details a fishing incident gone wrong during a leisurely boat trip across a lagoon with his late mother-in-law. While rowing on Lost Land Lake near Hayward, WI, a twilight bonding experience turned into a battle between fish, man, and mother-in-law. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Tobalski worked thirty-seven years in healthcare communications and now lives retired in Charlotte. He also publishes a blog at www.MrIdo.com where he parodies his relationship skills as a husband.
Hats Off! to Kim Church whose debut novel Byrd has been longlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize.
Hats Off! to Joan Leotta whose travel article on Belgium, as seen by a mystery lover (Poirot!), will appear in the August issue of Kings River Life.
Hats Off! to Janet Joyner whose poem "Anna Greene" is forthcoming in MayDay magazine.
Hats Off! to Debra Madaris Efird whose works entitled "The Cape Fear River: Medley of Magnificence" and "In a Sky Near You: One Woman's Story" were published as the feature articles in the Summer 2013 issue of The Carolinas Today magazine.
Hats Off! to Leigh Sanders, whose opinion piece "Agony, Grief, and a Refusal to Bend to NC Lawmakers" appeared in the July 16, 2013, edition of the Raleigh News & Observer.
Hats Off! to Joan Leotta, whose poem "Kitty Hawk Hang Gliding School" won third place in the San Francisco Dancing Poetry Contest.
Hats Off! to Maren O. Mitchell, whose nonfiction book Beat Chronic Pain, An Insider's Guide has been reviewed by The Midwest Book Review, and is featured in the July 2013 issue of their book review publication Small Press Bookwatch, on the Health/Medicine Shelf. The review is also posted with the Cengage Learning, Gale interactive CD-ROM series "Book Review Index," which is published quarterly for academic, corporate, and library systems.
Hats Off! to Laura T. Jensen, whose memoir Step by Step recently received a 5-star rating with Barnes & Noble Nook Books as a "great summer read."
Hats Off! to Walter Bennett, whose novel Leaving Tuscaloosa was favorably reviewed in the Southern Literary Review.
Hats Off! to Normandie Fischer, whose new novel Becalmed was featured in the New Bern Sun Journal.
Hats Off! to Ron Jackson, whose memoir essay "Letter to a Drowning Sailor" was accepted by the University of Nebraska Press for publication in an anthology of military-related writing covering all genres. It will be published Spring, 2014, under the Potomac Books imprint (acquired by U of N). It is a letter to his deceased father, who was shelled in the Pacific in WWII. His father survived, but was never the same.
Hats Off! to C. David Gelly, whose novel Fancy Gap has been serialized in Virginia's Galax Gazette.
Hats Off! to Linda Heuring, whose short story, "Whatever Will Do," was published in Clover: A Literary Rag, Volume 5, Summer 2013. This story had been long-listed for the Fish Prize in Ireland in 2011 and judge Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) awarded it Third Place in the Elizabeth Simpson Smith Short Story Prize from the Charlotte Writers' Club that same year.
Hats Off! to Kathryn Kirkpatrick and Alan Michael Parker: Kathryn won the 2012 Brockman-Campbell Award for her book, Our Held Animal Breath, while Alan's Long Division was named as an Honorable Mention. The contest is sponsored by the North Carolina Poetry Society and honors the best book-length volume of poetry published in the prior calendar year.
Jan Parker won an Honorable Mention in the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition for her story, " "Mayme."
Ashley T. Memory signed a contract with Ingalls Publishing Group of Boone, N.C. for the publication of her first novel, Naked and Hungry. It is scheduled to be released in November of 2011.
Three of Raymond Morrison's flash fiction stories appear in the third annual volume of Fast Forward Press' flash anthology, The Mixed Tape (available July 2010). Additionally, my story, "June Bug," won 2nd prize in the short-short category of the 2010 Press 53 Open Awards, and another story, "Calvin Bodenheimer and the Dalrymple Bull," will appear in Press 53's anthology What Doesn't Kill You, due out in October.
Hats Off! to Sheila Turnage, whose new kids novel Three Times Lucky is recommended middle-grade summertime reading by the Washington Post's "KidsPost," Publishers Weekly, and The Horn Book, among others. Go Mo and Dale!
Hats Off! to David Radavich, who has received the 2012 Zelda and Paul Gitlin Literary Award for the best essay published on Thomas Wolfe during 2011. The award was presented at the May conference of the Thomas Wolfe Society in Asheville. Radavich served as president of the Society from 2008-2010.
Tammy McElroy Wilson has recently published excerpts from her novel-in-progress including Southern Women's Review, Rockhurst Review, MoonShine Review and Wazee Journal. She is an MFA candidate at Stonecoast (University of Southern Maine.)
Hats Off! to Flora Ann Scearce, who won First Place in the 2012 Carteret Writers' 21st Annual Writing Contest ("Fiction") and Third Place in the "Writing for Children" category. First Place winners each received $100 and a plaque. Second and third place winners received $50 and $25 respectively, and certificates. Manuscripts that placed in the contest will be published in Carteret Writers' literary journal, Shoal, planned for summer release.
Hats Off! to Kathryn Lovatt, Gary Powell, Gregg Cusick, and Arthur Powers: all of whom were honored in the 2012 Press 53 Open Awards: Short Story competition. Kathryn claimed First Place for her story "How to Euthanize a Fish." Gary received an Honorable Mention for his story, "Super Nova." And both Gregg and Arthur were named finalists for their stories "Ghosts of Doubt" and "The Bridge," respectively. The Final Judge was Clifford Garstang.
Hats Off! to Art Taylor, Arthur Powers, and Jane Shlensky, who cleaned house in the 2012 Press 53 Open Awards: Flash Fiction. Art claimed First Prize for his story, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." Arthur and Jane were both named finalists for their stories "Famine" and "Dogs, Work" respectively. The Final Judge was Meg Pokrass.
Hats Off! to Peg Bresnahan of Cedar Mountain, whose three poems won Second Prize at the 2012 Press 53 Open Awards: Poetry. The Final Judge was Tom Lombardo.
Hats Off! to David Fuller Cook, whose unpublished YA manuscript The Adventure of Crow-Boy won an Honorable Mention in the 2012 Leapfrog Press Fiction Contest. The Adventure of Crow-boy, which includes illustrations by artist Susan Beebe, is the first book in a mythic trilogy; presently David is reworking the third manuscript in this series, The Language of the Crows.
Hats Off! to Larry O. Nichols, author of A Hobo Odyssey, who was interviewed recently on www.Valentinetti.com.
...to Bruce Lader. The international journal, Going Down Swinging, published him on CD reading his poem "Dearest Betty Carter." He has other poems recently in the Humanist, Falling Star Magazine, Earthshine, First Edition, .Cent, Yellow Medicine Review, and the anthology, Against Agamemnon: War Poems.
Two of her poems can be found in the current issue of The Wild Goose Poetry Review.
Fish Tales: The Guppy Anthology edited by Ramona DeFelice Long
Introduction by Chris Roerden
Publisher: Wildside Press
Ordering Information: http://www.wildsidebooks.com/Fish-Tales-The-Guppy-Anthology-edited-by-Ramona-DeFelice-Long-trade-pb_p_7754.html
... to Samm-Art Williams. He will receive the August Wilson Playwright award as part of the National Black Theatre Festival reception, August 1-6, 2011.
... to Debra Madaris Efird. She was named a Finalist in the 2011 Press 53 Open Awards contest for her short story entitled "Aileen's First Day at the New School."