Charlotte's Amy Clipston to sign new novel at LifeWay stores

Charlotte author Amy Clipston will sign copies of "Reckless Heart," her first young adult novel in her Kauffman Amish Bakery series, on Thursday and Friday, May 18 and 19, in Charlotte.

Clipston will be signing books at 5 p.m. May 18 at the LifeWay store at 10412 Centrum Parkway in Pineville. At 1 p.m. on May 19, she'll be at the LifeWay at 8821 J.W. Clay Blvd.

The novels in Clipston's Kauffman Amish Bakery series, set in Lancaster County, Pa., have regularly won places on Christian fiction bestseller lists. "Reckless Love," is the series' first novel aimed at young-adult readers.

Lots of Carolinas titles up for SIBA awards

Carolinas authors and publishing houses are well represented among finalists for this year's Southern Independent Book Awards, given by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.

In the fiction category alone, there's Anna Jean Mayhew's "The Dry Grass of August." She grew up in Charlotte. Also on the list are Davidson College graduate John Hart's "Iron House" and Charles Frazier's "Nightwoods." Frazier lives near Raleigh.

Two Charlotte authors are also finalists in the young adult category: Carrie Ryan for "The Dark and Hollow Places" and A.J. Hartley for "Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact."

Nonfiction nominees include Robert Morgan's "Lions of the West" and Celia Rivenbark's "You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl." Morgan, who teaches at Cornell University, grew up in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains. Rivenbark lives in Wilmington.

Morgan' "Terroir" is also a nominee in the poetry category. So is Ron Rash's "Waking." Rash, who grew up in Boiling Springs, teaches at Western Carolina University.

Check out the whole list here. Winners will be announced on July 4 -- Independence Day. (Also, Independents' Day. Get it?)

Charlotte author writes "The Boy Who Stole the Leopard's Spots"

Tamar Myers must be one of Charlotte's hardest-working -- and successful -- writers.

Over 15 years, she churned out more than 35 books as part of two comedic mystery series, one featuring a Mennonite innkeeper, the other an antiques dealer. More than 2 million copies have sold.

That's pretty impressive. But here's what makes me really happy for Myers: In 2009, she published "The Witch Doctor's Wife," a book that drew on her experiences growing up in the Congo, the daughter of missionaries.

She'd written it years earlier, and publishers had repeatedly rejected it. The content, they said, was too exotic.

When it was finally published, it got a starred Publishers Weekly review. Since then, she's continued the series. "The Headhunter's Daughter" was published last year.

And now comes the third book in the series: "The Boy Who Stole the Leopard's Spots" (William Morrow; $14.99.) Set in the Belgian Congo of 1958, it, too, is winning warm reviews. "Edge-ofyour-seat tragicomedy," Booklist says.

Myers will read and sign copies of her book 7 p.m. May 24 at Park Road Books, 4139 Park Road.

Memoir offers a bright side to Alzheimer's Disease

I once covered aging for this newspaper, so I've seen my share of poignant stories about people with Alzheimer's Disease. I've written a few myself, and I lived through one, with my mom as main character.

What I haven't seen is a book like Robert Leleux's "The Living End: A Memoir of Forgetting and Forgiving."

In his new memoir, Leleux ("Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy") finds that the dementia that plagues his beloved grandmother, pictured here with him, has one positive side. It causes her to forget that she's been estranged from her daughter -- his mother -- for decades.

As her memory faded, so did grudges and hurt feelings. She forgot to be angry. And when she was reunited with her daughter, their relationship gained a new life.

Leleux will be in Charlotte for a reading and book signing, 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 16, at Park Road Books, 4139 Park Road.

Uptown's BookMark bookstore to close

Weakened by a bad economy and a changing book industry, The BookMark, one of Charlotte's two remaining independent bookstores, is closing. Its last day will be June 1.

David and Kathy Friese opened The Bookmark in 1992 to cater to hundreds of uptown workers, especially Bank of America employees, who pass its Founder's Hall location each weekday.

In recent years, the store has suffered because of bank layoffs and construction that diverted foot traffic. But the growing popularity of electronic books, Friese said Tuesday, has probably dealt the most serious blow to sales. Online book sales also have cut into The BookMark's business.

"Our sales are off half of what they used to be" in 2000, he says. "We've made a lot of friends and sold a lot of books. We're just not selling enough anymore."

The store's entire inventory is now 40 percent off. When it closes, Park Road Books will be Charlotte's sole independent bookstore.

Want to get published? Check out Two Editors and a Comma

Writing a book isn't easy. Finding an agent or publisher can be even harder.

Now, two Charlotte women with extensive publishing backgrounds are offering workshops to teach writers how to get the attention of agents and editors.

Carin Siegfried and Betsy Thorpe have both worked for New York publishing houses, including St. Martin's Press and Random House. Thorpe also partnered with Charlotte's Charla Muller on "365 Nights," Muller's memoir about the unusual gift she gave her husband for his 40th birthday -- sex every day for a year. The book captured international attention.

Siegfried and Thorpe call their new endeavor Two Editors and a Comma. Don't you love the name? They'll hold their first workshop, "Getting Your Foot in the Door: New York Editors Tell All on How to Get a Publishing Deal," from 1-5 p.m. Saturday, May 12.

Topics they'll cover include writing a query letter and author bio, developing a marketing plan and researching and landing an agent. They'll also provide individual critiques of participant's first 500 words. Cost is $250.

Advance registration is required. For more information and location: carinsiegfried@earthlink.net or 704 608-6559.

Small press scores big with 'The Iguana Tree'

Think of the book publishing world, and most of us picture New York, not the Carolinas.

But recently, I’ve encountered several big publishing successes from small Carolinas presses.

The latest: “The Iguana Tree” ($24.95), the newest novel from Spartanburg’s Hub City Press, which earned a coveted starred review from Publishers Weekly. It is written by Michel Stone of Spartanburg. She'll sign copies at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 5 at Park Road Books, 4139 Park Road.

Publisher Weekly lauds this story of illegal border crossings for exploring a serious political and humanitarian issue without becoming heavy handed. It’s “well written, expertly paced, and timely,” PW says.

Last year, UNC Wilmington’s Lookout Books had an even bigger success with Edith Pearlman’s “Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories.” It went on to win fantastic reviews and prizes, including the New York Book Critics Circle Award.

And in March, Marjorie Hudson’s “Accidental Birds of the Carolinas,” a short-story collection, won a Pen/Hemingway honorable mention, an award given for a distinguished first book of fiction. Hudson lives in Chatham County. The book was published by Winston-Salem’s Press 53.

I see a trend. So does Jeffrey Lependorf, executive director of the New York-based Council of Literary Magazines and Presses.

He points out that the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to Paul Harding’s “Tinkers,” published by tiny Bellevue Literary Press. And the 2010 National Book Award winner, Jaimy Gordon’s “Lord of Misrule,” was published by McPherson & Co.

While the recent recession forced cutbacks and layoffs at the nation’s biggest publishing houses, small presses, already lean, weren’t affected as drastically, Lependorf says.

These small publishers, he believes, are gaining credibility among authors who once considered them a last resort. More writers are figuring out, he says, “it’s not all about a giant advance.”

What can be even more valuable is a publisher committed to marketing a book. When small press editors publish a book, it’s often because they love it.

At Press 53, that commitment has stoked sales growth of more than 20 percent a year since its 2005 opening, founder Kevin Morgan Watson says.

Hub City Press Executive Director Betsy Teter says what separates her press from the giants is that it will “beat the pavement” to market anything it publishes.

“I see our job,” she says, “as finding the gems and giving them a higher platform.”