Where Readers Meet Writers

I have discovered an unanticipated joy of becoming an author...meeting up with fellow readers and fellow writers. Just talking with them is a treat. Since Lessons Learned came out last fall, I've joined other writers in book events and met many people who enjoy reading just for the thrill of it all, my kind of people.

One group I meet with monthly is the Rising Suns of Literary Achievement. We rising suns (I love the name and its connotation) share experiences and ideas on marketing, finding much in common even though we represent a wide range of genres from poetry to nonfiction and every kind of fiction between. We applaud each other's newest releases. We offer suggestions on techniques. In fact, here we are, posing during the event with our books. This also had artists and musicians and a celebratory cake. What a group!!

My inner radar has realigned itself so much that I am finding authors wherever I go. I swapped books with a man at a consignment store at the beach this past week. John Compton's The Spiritual Pilgrimage of John E. Compton, fourth edition. I've not had a chance to read it yet, skimmed through, but not done the in-depth reading it will require. But oh, do I have something precious to look forward to. I hope he finds the same excitement opening the cover to mine.

This coming Friday and Saturday, Lessons Learned and I will be a part of the Blue Ridge Bookfest in Brevard, NC. Any event that has as its slogan, "Where readers meet writers" is my idea of a fun time ahead.

This year features author Wiley Cash and his debut novel, A Land More Kind than Home. I just purchased it on my Kindle Fire, downloaded and it's ready for me to read. Come this Friday afternoon, I'll get to meet him, get to express my feelings about his book, ask him questions, soak up his wisdom. I can't wait.

If you are like-minded and anywhere near the western mountains of North Carolina, please join us at the place where readers meet writers.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen 

A Sweet Lesson

Talk about Lessons Learned!

This week I discovered that writing about the past often proves to be much easier than writing about the present. The past is set in stone, over with, waiting patiently (sometimes) for the storycatchers of the world to chip away the clutter and find the real story. The present, however, is still the clay waiting not so patiently to be formed and dried into that stone. 

Rambling on...Once a book is written, it changes the present into the past before the ink is yet dried, regardless of any attempt by a well meaning author...As in Lessons Learned, Chapter 13, the Turning Points chapter, where I describe the current Pilot Mountain School facility, where I made a futile attempt at keeping the present frozen in time. When I wrote the book, there was a consignment shop in the facility. Now there's not.

When I wrote the book, the baked goods were part of the coffeeshop. Now they're not. And that is good news, because as of this Thursday, the once upon a time original cafeteria is now a bakery.

Sweet Things Bakery and Ice Cream Parlor

What a delicious sounding name! And what delicious looking treats await the visitor to Pilot Mountain School. If you are looking for a good excuse to visit the school, what better time than opening day, this Thursday, May 9. Sweet!!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Life is Like a Mountain Railroad

Life is like a mountain railroad

With an engineer so brave

We must make this run successful

From the cradle to the grave

Watch the curves, the hills, the tunnels

Never falter, never fail

Keep your hand upon the throttle

And your eye upon the rail

There's nothing like a bluegrass gospel song to give life a real perspective. There's also nothing like spending Sunday morning on a creekside joining several thousand other rain soaked souls in singing the chorus as the band plays along,

Oh, blessed Savior, thou wilt guide us

Til we reach that blissful shore

Where the angels wait to join us

In God's grace forever more



I've returned from my yearly travels to Merlefest and oh, my, I'm still singing, still walking on cloud nine. And my wet clothes are still drying. 

These past four days of music restored my soul like, well, like a springtime rain awakens the grass into a new year's growth.

Being one of thousands doesn't detract. This year being with the crowds meant "community."

 Together we celebrated the life of founder, Doc Watson, mourning not only losing him since last year, but his wife as well.

Together we dripped tears for George Jones and sang tributes to his music. Together we ignored the rain, ran from tent to tent, splashed through mud.

Only at Merlefest would a performer say, "I'm still gigging away," and the audience know exactly what he means. Only at Merlefest would a speaker brag he grew up in a home with two swings and four rockers on the front porch. That's living! Another bragged his town was so small nobody ever needed to use turn signals because people already know which way they were going to turn.

Four days of music. Nonstop. Oh, my!

So that was my weekend. I hope yours was as blessed.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

When Christmas Feels Like Home

Okay, so Christmas is months away, but it feels like Christmas to me. My newest book has hit the internet, although its release date isn't until September first. It's a children's picture book, about as opposite in genre and style and overall reading experience from the Lessons Learned nonfiction market as two books could possibly be. Yet both came from me, from my heart as much as from my head.





Doesn't this cover

make you want to peek inside?

The illustrator, Carolina Farias, is from Argentina. No, I've not met her, didn't even know about her until a few previews came my way. That's how picture books are done, like arranged marriages, "It's me with a story. It's her and her art," according to Eric Ode in a poem about matching manuscripts and artists that I found in a recent SCBWI (children's writer's professional organization) bulletin.

The publisher, Albert Whitman & Company, played matchmaker, my Hello Dolly!

And Oh, My, what a match!

The illustrations are beyond what I envisioned as I wrote about a little boy adjusting to living in a foreign land. I'm in love with my book.

I can't wait for you to open it and read it to your lap child.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Little Lending Libraries

News Flash! Best article I found in yesterday's Sunday paper - American Profile insert -

 Little Free Library, Sharing books, building community.

Seems that there's a movement going around the US now, little free libraries popping up in the least imaginable, but most delightful spots.



Wooden boxes filled with books for the taking. What a concept, but not exactly a new invention. I know of two in the first half of the twentieth century, both with connections to Pilot Mountain School.



In 1929 the Christian and Missionary Alliance assigned Phlora Nowling to be a missionary in Brindletown near the future site of Pilot Mountain School. She opened her "Log Cabin" school for the children. When the public school system finally built a small one-roomer, she instead operated a lending library from her home.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the globe, Christian missionary to China and future classroom teacher at Pilot Mountain, Lettie Hamlett, was doing the same thing, only with a few adjustments. This little lending library was no log cabin. Hers was a boat, one floating up and down the river, bringing books to the farmers working beside the canals and merchants in the small villages.

Books! Access to books! Free!

Sounds like the public library, doesn't it? Only these are operated by volunteers, people who believe in the value of books-in-hand. Read more about the Little Free Library movement at their website, http://www.littlefreelibrary.org. That's where I found all these pictures.

Then go forth in your own community and do what Phlora and Lettie did almost a hundred years ago, operate a small lending library. What a concept!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

The Movies

Last night was Oscar Night on the far side of the country. I watched the highlights this morning, complete with First Lady Michelle Obama's announcement of the Best Picture award - Argo - and with Best Actress Jennifer Lawrence's tumble up the steps in her haute couture Dior gown. I suppose even glitter, glamour and glory doesn't forever keep away reality.

Yet isn't that what the motion picture industry is all about? Elevating us to a different plane, allowing us to escape reality if only for a few snippets of time.

Imagine the 1950's and the best picture winners. All About Eve. An American in Paris. Greatest Show on Earth. From Here to Eternity.

Now imagine children from the South Mountains where electricity was only a decade old, where neighbors gathered at the one home in the community equipped with a television and where the big attraction on Friday and Saturday evenings was going to the Pilot Mountain School auditorium to watch a movie for a dime. Back in the forties, the PTA had purchased a film projector and by the fifties, teachers were showing films not only on weekend evenings for fund raisers, but also during school hours.

As I interviewed former students from that era, my eyes were opened to the power the movie industry had to influence a sheltered culture. The children were exposed not only to films with educational themes, but Hollywood films, Niagara starring Marilyn Monroe for instance. A former student told about watching it during school hours. Educational, I'm sure.

Another spoke about the first movie she had ever seen, a western, where gunfighters shot and killed each other. This impressionable child cried at seeing a death for the first time ever and even her mother's assurances that it wasn't real couldn't convince her to watch another movie for years to come. When the class went to the auditorium on film days, she opted to remain in the classroom and do extra work instead.

And then there was the elderly gentleman who told of another point of view:

It didn’t make a difference what the movie was, but on Saturday night, Friday night, one of them, I’d ride my bicycle down to the school and see the movie. They’d draw a pretty good crowd, because there wasn’t nothing else to do. They had a preacher down here that started out in a brush arbor. He’d have revival. We’d go and he was talking one night, he says, “Here they got a damnable movie machine up there at Pilot Mountain Schoolhouse that’s people going to see. You oughten be going to see such as that.” I didn’t quit going. It was his problem, not mine.

I'm not all that convinced that Hollywood was unaware of the possibilities of their culture altering media. This was a case of the proverbial genie out of the bottle, no way to return to the innocence before. The outside world had arrived in the South Mountains and life was never the same.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Elvis at Pilot Mountain School

Ever since the renovations at Pilot Mountain School were completed, the auditorium has been used for a wide variety of activities...wedding receptions, family reunions, bluegrass shows, gospel sings, Bible studies, even a pocketbook auction.

Last week on Valentine's Day I attended a sweetheart supper, with catered dinner, impressive decorations, tables and tables filled with friends I've made since I began this journey, and for our entertainment, Elvis. Well, sort of.

Meet Steve Brittain, aka Elvis, in this picture I borrowed from a News Herald article about him.

His wife Pat was my go-to person when I first began interviewing community members. She found phone numbers. She made lists. She called ahead to let people know I was for real. Valentine's Day she showed me a different side of her life: hostess, emcee and organizer.



Her husband Steve is an Elvis impersonator. I knew that because I had eaten lunch with him several times at the coffee shop. My photographer, Andrew Pitts, even took a picture of the two of them for possible use in the book. I call this pose, "Elvis Unmasked."

What I didn't know was how much fun an evening with Pat and Steve and Elvis would turn out to be. Remember the concept readers use, willing suspension of disbelief? When the music started and Steve/Elvis entered, yes, we willingly entered the suspension of disbelief.

Reality check message to the ladies in front rushing the stage, dancing along, putting money in his pants. This is not really Elvis. Elvis is dead. But for a moment, an hour and a half, this was Elvis and we were teenagers again and we suspended all reality and had fun.

Life is good!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen