The British Are Coming, Y'all!

Author Elizabeth Zelvin on Editing, Critique, and Craft

 Elizabeth Zelvin, author of Death Will Get You Sober and Death Will Help You Leave Him, capped a two-week tour through North Carolina yesterday at the Sternberger Center in Greensboro with her presentation "The End is Just the Beginning: Editing, Critique, and Craft."

Liz repeats the following mantras to herself when she writes:

• Just keep telling the story. This one is most important to her during first drafts.
• Nothing is wasted. Liz has analyzed her rejections for ways to improve her manuscripts and used down time to build her network and support system.
• I'm writing the best that I can at this time.

She shared numerous stories of her publishing wisdom with the audience. For example, she originally alternated first-person viewpoints between two characters, Bruce and Barbara, in Death Will Get You Sober. An editor at St. Martins (her current publisher) commented that Bruce was the stronger voice of the two. At first, Liz resisted the idea of making Bruce the main character and Barbara the sidekick because Barbara was her female voice. But after she completed a major edit that took Barbara out of the first person and cast her voice into the third person, she discovered that the edit separated the character from the author. This allowed Liz to give Barbara more freedom.

The enemy of craft, says Liz, is impatience. She counts the traits of emotional security and willingness to be vulnerable as essential in helping a writer receive the level of critique that will improve his or her manuscript the most.

Agatha award winning author Chris Roerden arranged Liz's tour. Thanks to Chris and Liz for the presentation yesterday. And what a pleasure to meet Liz my sister Guppy at last, after several years of emails!

 

Inside the World of Revolutionary War Reenacting

What do spectators see at the site of a Revolutionary War reenactment? What happens behind the scenes after the public leaves the site for the day? In response to everyone who has expressed interest, this post and future posts will delve into the wonderful hobby that's entertained and educated my family and me for about a decade. Welcome in the 18th century!

Spectators wandering through the Crown forces camp at Historic Camden in South Carolina on 7 November 2009 for the annual "Revolutionary War Field Days" event might have encountered these two young men. The lads are portraying a private and a musician in the 33rd Light Company of Foot, and they've posed before an accurate reproduction of the house occupied by General Cornwallis when he marched to Camden in August 1780. The private (left) wears a sleeved waistcoat, rather than the bulky red coat with white trim that we usually associate with regular troops of the 33rd Light Company. Lightweight, sleeved waistcoats were an adaptation deployed in many units in response to summer heat in the Southern colonies. Construction of these waistcoats also required less material than standard coats, an important consideration toward the end of the war, when supply trains for both sides were interrupted, and spare material was difficult to come by. The youthful infantry soldier in this picture carries a Brown Bess musket with fixed bayonet and wears a cartridge box and bayonet belt. The musician (right) wears the more traditional-style coat. Reverse colors (white coat with red trim) indicate that he's a musician. Considered junior officers, musicians wore swords and carried the fusils (short muskets) of their commanding officers. Often, they also carried a cat o' nine tails, for they were responsible for flogging disobedient soldiers. The logic here was that a boy who didn't yet possess the upper body strength of a man would be less likely to kill a noncompliant soldier while dispensing several hundred lashes upon the man. The ages of the infantry soldier and company musician are 16 and 14 respectively. In 1780, they would most definitely have been out in the thick of battle at those ages.

Visiting public in the Crown forces camp might also have spotted this effigy of Guy Fawkes, stuffed with straw and fireworks, awaiting the honor of being thrown in a bonfire. Guy Fawkes was involved in the notorious Gunpowder Plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament and King James I in 1605. He was executed the following year. Each year since 1605, on 5 November, the anniversary of his capture, folks in the U.K. celebrate Guy Fawkes Night by tossing an effigy of Guy into a bonfire. Often the action is accompanied by a fireworks display and feast. Guy Fawkes Night celebrations could also be found in His Majesty's North American colonies through the time of the War of Independence. At this reenactment, reenactors on the Crown forces side celebrate Guy Fawkes Night on Saturday, several hours after the site closes to the public. The Guy gets a lift to the roaring bonfire upon the shoulders of loyalists and redcoats who shout, "Burn the Guy! Kill the Guy!" (Mob mentality, yes.) After the effigy is tossed in and produces a sort of mini-Tet Offensive, reenactors continue the fun by detonating their own fireworks caches. A light dinner follows, as well as 18th-century dancing. For most reenactors, the party winds down by midnight. Note that while the pyrotechnics are at their peak in the Crown forces redoubt, envious folks in the Continental camp sometimes shoot bottle rockets our way. How tame.

This video clip shows a portion of the Crown forces charge at the 7 November reenactment. The original Battle of Camden, a major victory for General Cornwallis and the Crown, occurred in August 1780. Dressed in wool, a goodly number of combatants on both sides succumbed to the heat. Thus the battle reenactment is held the first weekend of November each year. (Except for the 225th anniversary battle reenactment, held in August 2005, with a heat index of about 110 degrees. I was there for it. Ick.) On the video clip, you can hear the Crown forces yelling as they charge and see the opposing militia line collapse and scatter after a final burst of musket fire. One of Continental General Gates's strategy errors for the battle was to line up some of his militiamen opposite seasoned British regulars. Throughout the war, militia on both sides were notoriously unreliable. The Continental Army came to this battle low on food, with many men weakened from diarrhea. Upon spotting redcoats bearing down on them with fixed bayonets, many of these sick, hungry militiamen threw down their muskets and fled into the forest. Can you blame them?

Here's a piece of the drill performed by reenactors from the Regiment von Bose about an hour before the battle reenactment started on 7 November. Listen for the commands in German. Historically, soldiers from Hesse-Kassel (Hessians) became part of General Cornwallis's army in the South, participating in combat with him through the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in March 1781. Some went on to Yorktown with him.

Had I been a little quicker with my camera, I'd have caught more of this fife-and-drum performance, including the clicking drumstick segment that occurred as I was readying the camera. Colonial Williamsburg, where I'll be signing books during the Grand Illumination event on 6 December, puts on a fabulous fife-and-drum show. Be sure to catch it when you're touring the city.

This video gives you an idea of camp cuisine at a reenactment. The chicken and rice stew also contains celery, carrots, and onions, and is flavored with herbs such as bay leaves. The granola, made with dried apples, nuts, and oats might also contain cinnamon and be sweetened with honey or molasses. Both these dishes were prepared on site earlier in the morning, using the campfire, pots, and utensils you see in the clip. While the fare is period-accurate, soldiers and civilians in both armies usually didn't eat so well. Most days, they were on the move and thus didn't have time to put together stew or granola. Some form of jerky, plus fried corn cakes, rehydrated peas, and rum formed a more typical diet — when the unit had food, and many units didn't consistently have food. The women's attire is typical of that for civilian women who followed a military unit. No elegant polonaise gowns here. The short jacket over the petticoat allowed women freedom of movement to perform manual labor such as cooking and laundering. For a middle- or lower-class woman, following an army was drudgery, and it could be very dangerous, as I depict in my novel Camp Follower. But in the 18th century, accompanying an army was often the only source of safety for civilians living in the backcountry.

The little girls in this video are playing a game, trying to catch a wooden hoop with two sticks. If children in an army camp had leisure time, they might play a game like this. But unless the unit they were following encamped for several days, they wouldn't have such time for recreation. They'd be running errands, carrying messages, gathering firewood, cooking, cleaning, and so forth. Many children became casualties of war. By following a military unit with an adult relative, they were exposed to all the depravations of war encountered by adults.

What's something new that you learned from reading this post? Leave me a comment. I'd love to hear from you.

Poisoned Pen's WebCon 2009

Much will undoubtedly be written in the coming weeks of PPWebCon, the first entirely virtual conference for mystery readers and writers, held in cyberspace 24 October 2009. Poisoned Pen Press took advantage of the full range of existing technologies available for the Internet (okay, a few times it overextended those technologies) to produce a ten-hour conference that included live and prerecorded interviews, panel discussions, and presentations.

Registrants received goody bags, pitched ideas for novels to editors, and chatted in the Coffee Shop. Overall, it was an amazing experience. I cannot wait to see what Poisoned Pen does with this medium in 2010.

I participated in a text panel called "Historical Mysteries — Do They Have Something to Say About Our Times?" with Beverle Graves Myers moderating. Since content for my panel as well as content for most of the rest of the conference is now available online for anyone who didn't register, I'm not going to spend a lot of time telling you what I saw and heard in individual sessions. But I do encourage you to explore the PPWebCon site thoroughly.

Make sure you check out Peter May's kick-off presentation about his research in China for his thrillers. He includes some visually stunning footage of Chinese culture, including the making of a Chinese crepe called a jian bing, as well as the trailer for his upcoming release, a standalone that's set in the virtual world. Chinese on cell phones, bicycling in the snow, practicing qigong and tai chi. Chinese propaganda delivered like "CSI." Chinese banquet with deep-fried scorpions. Oh, my. Talk about world building. Don't miss it.

Here are some themes I heard reiterated during my real-time participation in PPWebCon:

• A web site is a must for every author. But authors must use caution with blogs and social media. The first priority of authors is to write and sell their next well-written book. Don't let various forms of promotion get in the way of that.
• Go to conferences to make friends with booksellers and other authors. Build a network at conferences. But don't go to gab about you, you, you.
• Hand selling is what sells books. Indy bookstores are particularly good at hand selling. But authors must realize that this process takes a great deal of time. So-called overnight successes have usually been around for a number of years.
• Don't self-publish a book unless you're an established author with credibility. It's almost impossible for self-published books to get reviews. Furthermore, most self-published books don't go through the rugged internal review process enforced by a publisher. This process is crucial for growing the author's craft.
• The ability to buy e-books from bookstores will develop as a competitive trend.

Later today, I'm in an author panel at the Author Showcase, co-sponsored by Falls River Books and the North Carolina Writers Network. I hope to see you there!

Deadly Divas in Raleigh

"Tea with the Divas" features mystery authors (l to r) Sara Rosett, Laura Bradford, Marcia Talley (president of Sisters in Crime), Heather Webber, and Denise Swanson. Molly Weston organized the tour of these ladies through the Raleigh area. I caught up with them today, 23 October, at the Eva H. Perry Library. They discussed settings for their novels, characters who steal scenes, fan mail, themes, and the writing process. It was a pleasure to put faces to names that I've known until now in cyberspace only.

 

Create an Author/Writer Resume, and Toot Your Horn!

You have a resume for your day job, right? What would you do to go about building a resume for yourself as an author/writer, if you suddenly found yourself in need of one?

When I operated a product design and user interface design consultancy, I updated my resume after I completed every project to reflect any new software, hardware, people, and industry experience I'd gained as well as latest trends for the presentation of information on a resume. In 2006, I became a published mystery author. To my pleasant surprise, I found that published books, a bio, and word of mouth mattered far more than a resume in securing most speaking engagements, such as those of workshop presenter at a writing conference or a panelist.

But Academia still wants a paper resume, regardless of how many books you've published. Recently I applied to teach a workshop at Meredith College, as part of the Spring 2010 community program. I had to include a resume with my proposal. The content (audience, objectives, skills, credentials) and organization of this resume would, of necessity, be quite different from the resume produced by a product design consultant. Alice Osborn, who teaches at Meredith College and is also the Raleigh-area regional representative for the North Carolina Writers Network, emailed me her resume. I used it as a springboard to build my own author/writer resume.

Here are sections to include when building your resume:

Name and contact information. Center this information at the top of page one. Include your name, pen name, street address, phone number, email address, and web site address.

Professional objectives. Describe why you're reaching out to people with your expertise and how you expect to help them. Bullet each objective separately. Begin each sentence with a power verb, like "educate." These objectives will guide what you include in other sections of the resume. Be clear with them. Also, make them high-level. Your proposal is the place to include lower-level, specific goals that you expect attendees to accomplish during your class or workshop.

Education. List college degrees. If you've taken workshops or seminars that enhance your expertise with the professional objectives above, list them, too. Start your list with the most recent education.

Writing Experience. Here's where you show your many years' work experience as a writer, positions that helped you qualify for delivering those professional objectives. Again, arrange your list so that what's most recent is at the top. (If you're published, put "published author" at the very top.) Make each position a separate bullet point. Example of a listing: Technical writer, americansoftware.com ● Atlanta, GA (1991-1993).

Literary awards and distinctions. List your award receipts, nominations, honorable mentions, finalist positions, semi-finalist positions, etc. You can also list opportunities your expertise has given you, such as judging writing contests. Start your list with what's most recent. Strut your stuff. Example of a listing: Winner, 2007 Patrick D. Smith Literature Award ● Florida Historical Society.

Professional associations. List those organizations in which membership helps you grow professionally and achieve those objectives above.

Workshops, presentations, and other speaking engagements. Start your list with what's most recent. Don't include an event that doesn't contribute to the professional objectives. Example of a listing: Where Do You Get Your Ideas? (panel) ● Raleigh, NC ● Authors' Showcase, North Carolina Writers Network, Oct 2009.

Reviews received. If you're published, list review information for your most recent release first. Don't feel you have to cite every review you've received. Select a representative few. Example of a listing: Camp Follower ● Midwest Book Review, Christy Tillery French ● 1 Dec 2008.

Guest essays. Again, list the most recent first. And cite representative essays, those that reflect the range of your expertise, relating to those professional objectives. Example of a listing: Do Historical Mysteries Have Something to Say About Our Time? ● Poisoned Pen Press's Webcon text panel ● Oct 2009.

I included the titles of my books in the Writing Experience section. If you have a large number of books published, split that information out as a separate section. Depending on what else you have published, it might make more sense to list your published books, short stories, and magazine/newspaper articles in a separate section. List your public readings if they relate to the professional objectives.

Keep the whole resume to three pages or fewer. You won't be able to include everything. Make strategic choices that showcase the range of your expertise.

Don't be surprised if the creation of this resume reveals facets of your writing career that you'd overlooked. For example, when I completed the Workshops, Presentations, and Other Speaking Engagements section, I was amazed by how much traveling I'd done in the past three years. That certainly helps explain why I'm so tired. (Having two teenagers under my roof is another factor in the equation.)

The resume and proposal I sent to Meredith College helped me clinch the workshop slot. I'll be teaching my workshop, "Creating Archetypal Characters and Suspenseful Plots with the Hero's Journey," the evening of 27 April 2010 at Meredith College. Register for my workshop if you're in the Raleigh-Durham area during that time, and you want to work toward the following goals with your manuscript:

• Build relatable, deep, and meaningful characters.
• Structure a plot that sustains suspense.
  
• Repair breaches in a plot.

And please leave me feedback in the comments section below. Tell me how this post helped you.

Next up: PPWebcon.

Creating Archetypal Characters and Suspenseful Plots with the Hero's Journey

The Hero's Journey can be a powerful plotting framework for genre fiction. For more than a year, I've been teaching workshops on it, and in July, at the Harriette Austin Writers Conference, I expanded the workshop, folded in material about archetypal characterizations, and deepened the power of this plotting and characterization tool. Yesterday I presented the full workshop for the Carolina Romance Writers in Charlotte. With me are board member Martha Catt (L) and chapter president Virginia Farmer.

Audience interaction always makes this topic new and fun. As attendees absorb the material, I can see them make connections — not just with movies they've seen and books they've read, but with their own material. They squirm, anxious to go home, apply the concepts, fix their manuscripts, write. And they think of additional ways to build on the concepts I've taught.

Toward the end of yesterday's session, one attendee asked if we could identify all of Christopher Vogler's original seven major archetypal characters in the original Star Wars movie. Archetypes are like masks that characters can put on and take off, so one character can embody more than one archetype in a book or movie. Here are characters and archetypes that we identified. What do you think?

• Hero: Luke Skywalker
• Herald: R2D2, Imperial storm troopers
• Mentor: Obi-Won Kenobi, the violence of the Empire
• Threshold guardian: the desert, the Sand People, the Jawas, possibly also Luke's uncle and aunt
• Shapeshifter: Han Solo, Chewbacca
• Shadow: Governor Tarkin, the Death Star (Note: in this particular movie, Darth Vader and the Emperor were more in the background, like minions)
• Trickster: C3PO, Han Solo, Chewbacca

Totally off-topic, while I was in Charlotte, I stayed in the little apartment above Martha Catt's garage. Peaceful in there. No Internet, no phone, no TV. It's the perfect place for a frazzled writer to hole up for about two weeks when she desperately needs to finish a manuscript but keeps getting interrupted (sez I, about 95% finished with the first draft of Regulated for Murder). Martha employed some ingenious space-saving techniques when furnishing the apartment. Like the drawer pictured. She designed it to fit exactly into that "useless" corner space where two kitchen cabinets meet. And the cabinet below it is just as accessible through clever design. Martha's archetype is obviously the Wise Woman.

The Extraordinary Courage of Ordinary Folks in History

One reason we find it hard to connect with history's lessons is the speed with which significant events become shrouded in myth, often within our lifetimes. Farther back than our grandparents, we have little connection with people. Those of us in affluent countries have access to instant communications, antibiotics, fast food, and reliable transportation, whereas danger and scarcity shaped the everyday decisions of people who may have lived on the same soil generations earlier.

Via our school history textbooks, the courage of these folks filters down to us as the extraordinary fearlessness of comic book superheroes. Since you probably don't know many fearless superheroes, you can easily dismiss people of the past and their crucial stories. But what if our ancestors' courage was less about extraordinary, fearless superheroes and more about ordinary people who responded appropriately in the presence of their own fear?

That concept is what I spoke about on Thursday 24 September in Wilmington at a luncheon for the Osher Lifelong Learning Center, at UNCW. It also forms part of the essay I submitted for my participation in a text-based panel at Poisoned Pen's Virtual Webcon on 24 October. "Historical Mysteries: Do They Have Something to Say About Our Times?" will be moderated by Beverle Graves Myers and include panelists Aileen Baron, Rebecca Cantrell, Stephen D. Rogers, Kelli Stanley, and Nancy Means Wright. Register for the WebCon and enjoy author panels and presentations and a chat room without leaving your home. I hope to see you there.

Thanks to UNCW-OLLI and PPWebCon for the speaker opportunities.

Next up, a workshop about the Hero's Journey and Archetypes for the Carolina Romance Writers on 3 October.

Autumn 2009 Mini-Tour Into Western North Carolina

Early 10 September, I set out from Raleigh in a rental car — didn't want to put my poor, old Honda through the rigors of the Eastern Continental Divide again — and arrived in Boone, NC in good time for my 10 a.m. workshop on archetypal characters, presented to the High Country Writers (HCW). This was an honor for me because these folks had invited me back after my workshop same time last year on the Hero's Journey. During the presentation this time, we discussed such provocative topics as why Scarlett O'Hara might be classified as a sociopath, and what heroic qualities Satan possesses. Never a dull moment with HCW. Such a fun group with a terrific sense of humor. They took me out to lunch afterward, so now I know there are at least two good Chinese restaurants in Boone. But like last year, I didn't see the sun shine until I left Boone.

After driving an hour and half on two-lane country roads beneath the likes of Grandfather Mountain, I arrived Friday mid-afternoon in Burnsville, home to the 2009 Carolina Mountains Literary Festival (CMLF), where I was again quite honored to be speaking, and I'd again accepted the hospitality of Lucy Doll. After I was squared away in her guestroom, she fed me yummy beans and rice for dinner, then had a small wine-and-munchies gathering at her house. We tried to hang out on her front porch, but it was unseasonably chilly, even after she'd loaned me a coat once worn by actress Helen Hayes, so we eventually migrated inside. Lucy's long-time friend, Leeann Hill, arrived later, from Atlanta, an arduous trip to make in the dark. Leeann writes web-based training for Ceridian. Since I was a technical writer in a previous lifetime, Leeann and I had much to talk about. She stayed next door for the weekend, with Lucy's neighbor, Dan.

Someone from the party left us with a mound of scrumptious, home-baked French bread. Friday morning, Lucy, Leeann, and I knocked out just about all the bread by making French toast. It was a tough job, but someone had to do it. Then we all waddled over to the festival.

I'd met Peggy Poe Stern last year at the festival, so I decided to drop in on her early (9 a.m.) session, "Q&A: Writing the Novel," to say hello. Inside, I spotted the moderator and about ten attendees, but no Peggy. Meanwhile, the moderator was homing in on me like I was handing out winning lottery tickets. I told her, "I'm not Peggy. I just dropped by to say hello to her." The moderator pointed to my author badge and said, "I know you aren't Peggy, but you're an author, and Peggy's stuck in gridlock behind a horrible accident involving a fatality, and we need an author to answer questions from these folks who are writing novels." Ulp. Okay. It turns out that these were general questions about writing, not Peggy-specific questions, so I was able to help the writers. (Whew!) And when Peggy did arrived, the CMLF was able to reschedule her session for Friday afternoon. A win-win for Peggy and her audience.

The nasty traffic pileup had also delayed the arrival of Gloria Houston, far left in the image, who was moderating the Keynote panel at 10 a.m. It reminded me that last year, the arrival of Hurricane Ike in the Gulf of Mexico had caused the petroleum pipelines to be shut down to much of the Southeast United States during the CMLF weekend, so speakers a year ago were also delayed while they waited in long lines to buy gas. The theme of the festival this year was "Mountain Mosaic: We All Come from Somewhere Else." Sans Gloria, the other panelists started discussing the relationships between their writing, heritage, and current issues. I'd met Eleanora Tate, second from left, the night before at Lucy's party. In fact, she'd left her Labrador Retriever mix, Shaka (as in Shaka Zulu), at Lucy's house Thursday night because Lucy fosters dogs and could provide a loving doggy motel for authors who traveled with their pets. Eleanora, an award winning author from North Carolina Central University, writes for middle-grade readers. On the panel, we also had Wayne Winkler, second from right, a Melungeon historian and author from East Tennessee State University, who spoke about Melungeons; and Robert Conley, far right, an author from the Western Band of the Cherokee and a Sequoyah Distinguished Professor in Cherokee Studies. By the time Gloria Houston arrived, the panel had clearly distinguished itself as a mosaic of authors with rich and diversified backgrounds.

Some of Robert's books contain depictions of Cherokee Indians in the Appalachians and have been labeled by publishers as Westerns, simply because of the Indian element. And I've thrown publishers for a loop by writing about the Revolutionary War in the South. Publishers like to categorize and have a hard time figuring out what to do with certain material.

After a delicious lunch of turkey chili, Vicki Lane and I walked over to hear Hal McDonald read from his work in progress, a sequel to The Anatomists, which won Court TV’s "Search for the Next Great Crime Writer" contest and was published by Harper-Collins. Then I listened to Vicki's presentation on how she has pulled together the pieces of her mystery series to present a mosaic of the Western North Carolina mountains.

In this picture, Lucy, draped with doggies (Shelby, Maggie, Mr. Carmichael, and Annie) takes a snooze while Leeann and I wash dinner dishes. Lucy, Leeann, Dan the neighbor, keynote speaker Ann Pancake, and I assembled a delicious dinner Friday night at Lucy's house. After Lucy, a festival coordinator, had been on her feet all day, helping to make the event run smoothly, Leeann and I weren't about to let her wash dishes.

Saturday morning 12 September, I caught the first part of a "shop talk" between Hal McDonald and Vicki Lane. In their session, appropriately titled "High Tea and Apple Cider," these two residents of Madison County with very different backgrounds discussed how they met in the authorship of mysteries. I had to leave early to make sure the equipment for my back-to-back presentations was set up.

It's a presenter's nightmare: you have competition from a couple of powerful concurrent sessions, plus your AV equipment doesn't work. By fifteen minutes into my first session, when we were still unable to coax the projector out of displaying my PowerPoint presentation backwards, I knew I had to start my presentation without the slides, or I'd never finish it on time. The good news: I already had a decent-sized crowd in the room and my next session was in the same room, so I hoped to hang onto much of my audience between sessions and modify the second session to fill in the blanks from the first. In "The Storyteller's Mosaic," I explained the stages of the Hero's Journey for readers and moviegoers (but not to the detail I use for writers), and I used examples from three classical movies to illustrate each stage. Most of my audience comprehended where I was going, despite the lack of a visual. Miraculously, during the break between sessions, the projector got fixed, and the room filled up with more attendees. Due to popular request, I ran through my slides quickly in the second session, before I did a reading from Camp Follower.

My titles in the bookstore area really got bought up after that. Here are some comments from attendees:

"The subject — Hero's Journey — was the best plotting aid I've ever listened to. Even if it's explained by other sources, Suzanne's approach is excellent."

"The best part of the session was Suzanne's clarity, organization, examples and content. Bring her back!!!! Give her a workshop spot. Most useful presentation of the festival."

And here's a comment I didn't expect: "After attending a session in which she substituted, I couldn't miss attending the others." That was in reference to Friday morning's session, when I filled in for Peggy Poe Stern.

Wow, folks, thank you! Grasshopper is so grateful! Maybe I'll get to return to CMLF in 2010 and teach the big workshop on the Hero's Journey and Archetypal Characters that I'm teaching for the Carolina Romance Writers 3 October, in Charlotte.

After lunch I attended Robert Conley's reading about a Cherokee fellow at the turn of the last century who was miscast by the locals as a hoodlum and wrongly arrested several times. He finally got fed up with the injustices in the justice system — timely, with the ongoing exposé of the Innocence Project — and turned to robbing banks during the era of John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd. With wistfulness, Robert painted him a dashing, heroic figure and said he wouldn't have minded being a bank robber in the good old days. Can't say I blame him.

I drove back to Lucy's house for a nap and a cup of tea, fortifying myself for the three-hour happy hour that was coming up. This social was where I really got the opportunity to talk with other guests, such as Richard Allen Taylor, co-editor of Kakalak and poet; the editor of Press 53, Kevin Watson; poet Seabrook Wilkinson; historical novelist Charles F. Price; and author Marlin Barton.

Kevin Watson, Seabrook Wilkinson, and Vicki Lane.

Charles and Ruth Price.

Rhonda and Marlin Barton, Brette and Daniel Barron.

Of course, we all looked forward to the banquet and Ann Pancake's stirring keynote that combined the themes of environmentalism and coexistence. Make myths to preserve and create culture, she encouraged us.

Afterwards, folks showed up at Lucy's house. I chatted with them a few minutes but was too pooped to stay up later, plus I had the drive back to Raleigh in the morning, so I headed for the shower. Thirty seconds into the shower, my hair loaded with shampoo, I heard the Burnsville fire siren sound. The last time I heard a bona fide fire siren was in the 1980s, when I still lived in Florida. Every place I've lived since Florida has had a full-time fire department. Interesting how times have changed.

Sunday morning, Lucy, Leeann, and I had breakfast, then I drove back to Raleigh using a different route, since I didn't have to return through Boone. I'm sure the new route saved me at least half an hour. But on the road just before the switchbacks and serious downgrade out of the Appalachians began, I found myself behind a guy in a late-model car who kept exchanging kisses with a beagle (yes, it was a beagle) in the front seat beside him. Several times, he almost clobbered oncoming traffic. Fortunately, just before the switchbacks, he turned off the road into a Burger King parking lot. I wouldn't have enjoyed watching him kiss the beagle while he navigated the switchbacks. Too much like watching a Darwin Award in the making.

Many thanks to the High Country Writers; the planning committee for the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival, especially Lucy Doll; and all the folks who attended my presentations, wrote such lovely evaluation comments, and purchased my books.

Next up: a presentation for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington on Thursday 24 September.

Camp Follower Receives Another Award Nomination

Camp Follower has been nominated for a second award, the 2009 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, given by the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association. The award is presented during dinner at the NCLHA's annual meeting, in early November.

The Things We Do For Research

I'm about 80% completed with the first draft of Regulated for Murder, taking a break today to guest-blog on Meanderings and Muses. If you've ever wondered what crazy lengths writers of mysteries, suspense, and thrillers go through to conduct research, check it out. The experiences we have are amazing!