'Dixie Dew' author Ruth Moose on UNC-TV 'Book Watch' today at 5 p.m.

'Doing It at the Dixie Dew' is one of the catchiest titles of 2014, and the praise goes to former Charlottean Ruth Moose, an Albemarle native who lives in Fearrington Village near Pittsboro.

You can hear her this afternoon at 5 on D.G. Martin's "Book Watch" (UNC-TV.) She'll tell you how she first wrote this cozy mystery and entered it into a contest. She didn't win, but she got good advice from one of the contest judges.And unlike many other writers, Moose has the perseverance of a hound dog. She re-wrote the mystery and years later re-entered the Malice Domestic Competition for Best First Traditional Mystery contest with her  revised manuscript. This time, she won, and her prize was publication and a nice check.

Novelist Lee Smith calls "Dixie Dew" a "fast-paced romp through small-town (Southern) society -- mayhem and maybe even murder lurk behind those frilly lace curtains at the Dixie Dew B&B. This entertaining novel is just as rich and delicious as inn keeper Beth McKenzie's lemon creme cake."   

Moose, who taught for 15 years in the creative program at UNC Chapel Hill, is now writing a sequel to "Dixie Dew."

Ruth Moose Gives Two Readings Saturday: Charlotte and Cornelius

Ruth Moose

Oh, winning is such sweet revenge, especially when you hear a story like former Charlottean Ruth Moose's. Moose wrote the first draft of  a mystery novel, "Doing It at the Dixie Dew," 25 years ago on a Kaypro computer in a house she and her late husband built deep in the woods of  the Uwharrie

Mountains. Each summer, free from her job as a reference librarian at Pfeiffer College in Meisenheimer, she tinkered with the manuscript, then submitted it to the first Malice Domestic Competition. She didn't win, but she was named a finalist, and an editor there suggested revisions.

But Moose was too busy, and she shoved the manuscript into a drawer.
Meanwhile, she won a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and went on to publish three collections of short stories and six of poetry.
Years later, retired from 15 years of teaching creative writing at UNC-Chapel Hill, she tackled the novel again and submitted it once more to the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition. Bingo. This time she won.
Over the years, Moose had been bringing  the manuscript to the monthly sessions of a writers' group that met at the old Poplar Street Books in Charlotte's Fourth Ward. In her acknowledgments at the back of "Dixie Dew," she doesn't forget that group: "This is not to thank the members of my long-ago Charlotte writers' group who disliked this manuscript from word one."
"Doing It at the Dixie Dew" is a cozy mystery set in the fictional town of Littleboro, N.C., where Beth McKenzie attempts to turn an old Southern mansion into a bed-and-breakfast. Her first guest is murdered, and three days later a young priest is found strangled in his chapel.
She'll read from her novel at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday at the Cornelius Public Library, 21105 Catawba Avenue, Cornelius, and again at 2 p.m. Saturday at Park Road Books, Park Road Shopping Center, Charlotte.
Moose will also appear on D.G. Martin's "Book Watch" at noon on UNC-TV on June 15.