Dine with these acclaimed novelists at Bibliofeast at Maggiano's on Oct. 13

Wiley Cash

There's a bit of magic when you meet the person who's created the novel or short story you fell in love with. It's like when you were six, and you happened on your first grade teacher in the grocery store. Not until that moment did you get it that she actually existed outside the classroom. And now, as an adult, you see that this writer, whose hand you are shaking, lives in a world as tangible as the one you inhabit.

You'll have the opportunity to enjoy that special magic at a Bibliofest, 6-9 p.m., on Oct. 13, when 10 well-known and highly praised writers join you for dinner at Maggiano's Little Italy at SouthPark in Charlotte.

There's not even the slightest catch. All you need is a ticket.
 
The event is sponsored by the local chapter of the Women's National Book Association, a group that brings together book lovers and book industry professionals who support reading and writing.

The line-up of authors is impressive: Wilmington's acclaimed Wiley Cash, author of the novel, "This Dark Road to Mercy";  Raleigh's Kim Church, author of a stunning first novel, "Byrd"; Charlotte's own Kim Wright, whose novel, "The Unexpected Waltz," swirls with suspense and details about Charlotte.

And a writer I've just discovered, Winston-Salem's Charlie Lovett, author of a brand-new, gorgeous book, "First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love and Jane Austen." And Decatur, Ga.'s Joshilyn Jackson, who wrote a page-turner of a novel about science and miracles, "Someone Else's Love Story."

Charlotte's own Erika Marks will be on hand. She gave us the taut novel, "It Comes In Waves," set on Folly Beach, S.C. And Wilmington's Rebecca Petruck, author of the popular "Steering Toward Normal," a middle school favorite. Also Allegra Jordan of Chapel Hill, whose lyrical war novel, "The End of Innocence," abounds with rich, historical detail. 

N.P. Simpson of Raleigh will be there. She gave us "B.O.Q.: An NCIS Special Agent Fran Setliff Novel," a military mystery set on Camp LeJeune. And Charleston's John Warley, whose novel, "A Southern Girl," is touted by Pat Conroy as the best book he's ever read about Charleston's "mysterious and glittering high society."

To Purchase Tickets:

$45 for members of The Women's National Book Association
$55 for non-members
www.wnba-Charlotte.org or purchase at Park Road Books, 4139 Park Road, Park Road Shopping Center.

Deadline for ticket purchase: Oct. 10.
  



 

Novel Set in Charlotte is PW's Pick of the Week

I'm not the least bit surprised that the latest novel by Charlotte's Kim Wright (aka Kim Wiley), "The Unexpected Waltz" (Gallery Books, $24), got a starred review in the most recent issue of Publisher's Weekly. Not only that. The magazine selected "Waltz" as its Pick of the Week.

Kim Wright

The book's not out until early June, but I plunged into the advance review copy while my 5-year-old grandson was at choir practice. Now I'm thoroughly engrossed. The novel has everything I look for in a good read: intrigue, interesting characters at a crossroads and a comfortable authority that allows me to surrender to whatever happens next. What's more, the novel is set in Charlotte.

Wright, who grew up in Indian Trail, is also the author of a 2010 novel, "Love in Mid Air," which People magazine called an "astute and engrossing" debut.

PW describes this latest a "dance drama," starring the new widow Kelly, with more money and time on her hands than she knows what to do with. And, the magazine continues, Wright "guides us expertly through a moving, layered, and lyrical exploration of transformation."  

Head's up: Her book launch on June 8, 2-4 p.m., will be at the Piper Glen Ballroom, 6420 Rea Rd, beside Trader Joe's. You're invited for "signature drinks, readings, a free waltz lesson, and a few surprises."

New books from Carolinas Writers

Carolinas writers are busy cranking out books.
Vanderbilt professor and Rutherfordton native Tony Earley has a new story collection,  "Mr. Tall,"

Alan Michael Parker

out in August. It's been 20 years since Earley's last collection, "Here We Are in Paradise." So what's he been doing? I'll save that news.

Former N.C. Poet Laureate Fred Chappell has a collection of poems, "Familiars," due in August from LSU Press. If you haven't guessed, it's about cats.
Davidson's Alan Michael Parker has a novel due in June from Dzanc Publishers. Says Parker: "The Committee on Town Happiness" is set in a fictional small town, not a college town. Kirkus Review: "Parker's not trying to be Dostoevsky here but rather wishes to create light and good-natured entertainment -- and he succeeds."
 UNC Charlotte's Aimee Parkinson's eerily intriguing novel, "The Petals of Your Eyes," is out in May from Starcherone Books. About her collection of stories, "The Innocent Party," Cris Mazza ("How to Leave a Country") wrote: "These stories are like running a finger around a seemingly smooth edge of glass -- you don't know you've been cut until you bleed."
Charlotte's Kim Wright, whose novel "Love in Mid Air," was praised by Publisher's Weekly for "its fresh perspective and sympathetic characters few writers can match," has a novel, "The Unexpected Waltz," due in May from Gallery Books.

Lee Smith

Scott Ely was a popular fiction writing professor at Winthrop University in Rock Hill. Ely died in October, and his last novel, "Plumb's Bluff," is due in June from Livingston Press. If you know Ely's work, it won't surprise you to find a hero gunning to win a national rapids race, as well as a murder to solve and a Romanian sculptress who swims nude in the river's baptismal pool. Unadulterated Ely.

Hendersonville native Robert Morgan ("The Road from Gap Creek") says he's finishing a novel set in 1850 -- "The Year of the Fugitive Slave Law" -- about two slaves who escape from the Carolinas and make their way to Ithaca, N.Y.
Down in Sullivans Island, S.C., Josephine Humphreys ("Nowhere Else on Earth") is working on a novel with a contemporary setting and is also absorbed in "something -- I'm not sure what -- about Colonial Haiti. I'll be back with more on that.
Hillsborough's Lee Smith ("Guests on Earth") has finished a memoir called "Dimestore." Smith's dad owned the Ben Franklin dimestore in the small, coal-mining town of Grundy, Va. The project, she says, "got a kick start recently when the entire town was demolished as part of the flood-control project." The house she was born in was also bulldozed. Someone salvaged the Smiths' brass door knocker, which now hangs in her study.
 
 

Want to be an author? Check out "Your Path to Publication"

Dozens of guides on the market are designed to teach you to write.

But what happens after you've written? How do you get an agent? How do you make connections? And -- the big question -- how do you get published?

Charlotte's Kim Wright answers those questions and more in her lively new book, "Your Path to Publication: A Guide to Navigating the World of Publishing" (Press 53; $15.95).

Wright, author of the 2010 novel "Love in Mid Air," tackled this subject to fill what she saw as a market void.

Lots of books offer writing instruction. Few give the inside scoop on publication. "It was a book that would have been helpful to me five years ago," she told me.

Along with lots of nuts-and-bolts advice, she also imparts wisdom acquired the hard way: "If everyone's flattering you and calling you literary," she counsels, "all that means is that they are not going to give you any money."

About writing conferences, she says: "There's always some self-impressed New Yorker with a name like Adrienne who's the last person in America who still smokes and who keeps running out at every break to talk on her phone, presumably to Kate Medina and Salman Rushdie and people way more important than you. But then the day comes when her work is up for critique and it turns out there's just one little crack in her armor -- the girl can't write for s---."

Wright dishes advice about contracts, publicists and editors with humor, but she doesn't pull punches. If you can't get an agent to represent you, she warns,"odds are no editor will ever see, much less purchase, your manuscript."

And in today's publishing world, she says, you must promote yourself -- on Facebook, on Twitter, through blogs. Would reclusive J.D. Salinger get published today? Wright thinks not. "I don't think the writer who just writes will exist," she says.

Though her first novel was published by Grand Central, a large press, she went with the small Press 53 in Winston-Salem for this book. One important reason: Press 53 prints on demand. That means it prints copies as they're sold. So Wright can update her book every six months if she needs to.

"I wanted to not have 1,000 books out there when the market's changing," she says. And the market, especially self-publishing, is changing fast.

Wright's book includes a chapter on the subject -- "The Brave New World of Self-Publishing." Like much advice in her book, it's based on experience. Wright is now writing a paranormal romance with a friend. They plan to self-publish the work as an e-book.

“Your Path to Publication” is available through amazon.com and press53.com.