Tuesday, February 14, 2012



WRITING A BOOK IS ONLY HALF OF IT!….Around the South in 80 Days
FEB. 14, 2012: On January 19th, I kicked off my 44-book store tour for my sixth novel, Render Unto the Valley, with a BOOKS & BITES Author’s Luncheon at the Lake Lure Inn sponsored by the Mountains Branch Library in Lake Lure, North Carolina. What a charming send-off! As I looked around that elegant, yet cozy, room in that historic inn with sixty sets of eyes on me…mostly folks I had never met before, I got a wonderful gut feeling that the tour would be a great success.
Since then, I have been to the Barnes & Nobles in Spartanburg, Asheville, Winston-Salem, Mt. Pleasant, and North Charleston, as well as three of my favorite independent book stores: Malaprops in Asheville, Fountainhead in Hendersonville, and Litchfield Books in Pawleys Island.
There sure are a lot of folks with Electronic Readers
As I go around to these stores, I talk with their patrons and am finding that a great deal of them are reading books on electronic gadgets…I’m guessing 30-40% of them. Yet those very same folks are still drawn to an actual book store. As I chatted with people pouring into these stores I could see why. They were looking for the unique kind of stimulation you get when you see hundreds of books all vying for your attention, all at one time, all with colorful, interesting covers and provocative titles. And then there’s the coffee… and the homey ambiance created by people studiously browsing through books in a search for excitement, escape, knowledge…whatever.
I’m back home now and will be at Park Road Books in Charlotte on Sat. the 18th and the Sharon Road Barnes & Noble in Charlotte on Sunday…and am looking forward to it!

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