Monthly Archives: December 2021

Meredith Ritchie’s Poster Girls: A Historical Novel Set in Charlotte During WWII

December 20, 2021 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

During World War II, the name Rosie the Riveter was often used when referring to the women who played such a crucial role in the production of war-related materials.   Norman Rockwell created an iconic image of Rosie the Riveter that ran on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1943 and then was reproduced as a popular poster.  This image of Rosie the Riveter serves as a touchstone for Meredith Ritchie’s Poster Girls, a historical novel that deals with the women who worked at Charlotte’s Shell Plant where they manufactured ammunition for the war effort.  Meredith tells the story from the perspectives of two military wives—one black and the other white—who both find employment at the Shell Plant.  The novel delves into the nature of life on the home front, but it is also a story about an unlikely friendship.

A native of Charlotte, Meredith has many years of experience in the area of business communications.  She has worked for some of Charlotte’s leading financial institutions, but there is a big difference between business writing and writing a work of historical fiction.  For Meredith, the decision to try her hand at writing a historical novel was tied to her experience as a mother of triplets. When her three kids headed all off to college, she decided that the time had come for her to pursue her dream of writing fiction.  I recently contacted Meredith and asked her for more information about this decision.  Here is what she sent to me:

Going from zero to three kids overnight in 2000 was scary, but not as scary as going from three to zero in 2018.  I still had my career, but in anticipation of this dramatic cessation of “noise” in my house, I did some self-reflection to figure out what I wanted to do next (rather than “helicopter parent” my kids on three separate campuses). In those busy years, whenever I could grab a few moments, I loved to read historical fiction and a good HF book would often make me want to research more about that time and place. I have always been a good business writer, thanks to my jobs in banking. Creative writing offered the steep learning curve I was looking for to occupy my time after my kids graduated.

My story idea of a women’s empowerment book and the forgotten Shell Plant as its setting came to me at the dawn of the #metoo movement. Then I wrote the story through the Black Lives Matter movement. Every time I Googled something out of curiosity, another piece of the puzzle fell into place. It is a story about my character’s awakening that mirrored my own. To borrow a quote from the amazing Toni Morrison, I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it. I had the story idea and the drive, I just needed to hone my skills to get it done. So I started reaching out to local authors like Sarah Creech and Kathy Izard.  They were gracious enough to meet with me and share their journeys. They told me about Author’s Lab and I was accepted into the 2019 class. I have always loved a school setting, and I like to think I got my “MFA” from A-Lab. For twelve months, we met all day on Saturday once a month. Paula Martinac was my A-Lab writing coach and she guided me through the completion of my first draft by April of 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic lockdown. By completing my manuscript, I learned I was part of only 3% of all people who try to write a book. I also learned that the hardest part was yet to come. The revision process and the submission process were grueling, but by that time I was determined to honor my story and my characters and see this thing through. My kids were watching me too. Would mom quit or finish what she started?

I have always loved puzzles of any kind. The editing and revision process is a lot like a 100,000-word puzzle that I was determined to solve.  I used many local editor resources like Kim Wright and Betsy Thorpe and Warren Publishing to mold the story into its current form. 

I’m not the kind of writer who journals every day or has to write every thought and feeling down in order to process it. There’s just not enough time in the day, as I am still employed full time by one of the major banks in town. Before I began this journey, I admired writers and learned something from every book I read. So my goal in writing was always this: I wanted to offer my story to the reader with the high minded pursuit of letting them see themselves, so they don’t feel as alone. This is especially important for women, including women of color, to see stories where they are empowered to make positive change through their own unique style.

This is what I’ve tried to do. It’s not perfect. It’s my first novel, but I learned so much about Charlotte and about myself from writing it. I can only hope the characters might teach others as well. I’m already starting to craft my second novel, also a women’s empowerment story told through historical fiction, and based on my husband’s family living in Tombstone, Arizona.

For readers who want to know more about Meredith and Poster Girls, please click on the following link:  https://www.meredithritchie.com/

Charlotte’s gleaming skyscrapers and countless new condominium projects reflect Charlotte’s status as a quintessential New South city.  Charlotte might give the appearance of being brand new, but the city actually has a long and rich history.  One chapter in that history relates Charlotte’s role as a center for the production of naval ammunition shells during World Warr II.  Meredith Ritchie’s Poster Girls does an excellent job of showing how the Shell Plant shaped life in Storied Charlotte in the early 1940s.

Tags: fictionhistorical novelShell Plant

Derick Wilder’s Poignant Picture Book about a Dog and His Child Friend

December 13, 2021 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

I grew up on the side of a mountain where I had something of a feral childhood.  I spent much of my early childhood wandering around the mountain, but I was usually not alone.  We had an old collie named Gypsy, and she almost always stayed at my side or rested nearby, always keeping an eye on me.  My parents used to say that they had me but Gypsy raised me.  I thought about Gypsy as I read Derick Wilder’s touching debut picture book titled The Longest Letsgoboy.  Gypsy is long gone, but I have a feeling that she would identify with the dog in this book.

Published in October by Chronicle Books, The Longest Letsgoboy tells the story of an old dog and a young girl going for one last walk in the woods together.  Narrated in the voice of the dog, the story beautifully captures the special relationship between a dog and a child.  The dog has a unique way of talking.  He has his own words for the things that are important to him.  He calls trees tallsticks, refers to squirrels as branchjumpers, and uses the name Little when talking about his girl.  The dog’s love of Little shines through on every page.  He cares deeply about Little, and he wants to make sure that she is going to be okay.  Cátia Chien’s mixed-media illustrations are in perfect synch with the strong emotions that the story evokes.

With the publication of The Longest Letsgoboy, Derick now joins the ranks of picture book authors and illustrators who call the Charlotte area home.  However, Derick took a long and winding road on his journey to becoming a published picture book author.  I asked him about how he came to write this book, and here is what he sent to me:

I’ve been writing since I was a kid—journaling vacations, penning poetic birthday cards, and scribbling silly stories. And after one career in technology and another working with children, I’ve sort of come full circle, initially falling in love with picture books after spending endless hours sitting on the floor of our library and local bookstores with my little girl. Once hooked, I began scribbling silly stories again, this time for an audience of one.

Fast forward almost a decade and that little girl has magically become a teen. Meanwhile, one of those silly stories turned into an actual book, as The Longest Letsgoboy, illustrated by Cátia Chien, was released in October. It’s a circle-of-life tale told through the eyes of an aging dog, and sprinkled with his own dog-speak, taking a final walk with his best friend, a little girl.

This book was actually inspired by a real-life event. I write on the back patio quite a bit, and my huskies at the time, Lakota and Kaya, would often sit by my feet. One morning, Lakota, then an elderly boy, got up and slowly strolled around our yard. I followed him, and it felt like he was saying farewell to the surrounding flora and fauna. So I substituted my daughter and imagined them walking through the woods, with the dog knowing it would be his last day on Earth. I wrote a (very bad) first draft that morning, then spent time in the forests of our local greenway, trying to figure out how a dog might refer to the natural elements. I’d watch squirrels, lie under trees and stare at their canopies, speak to flowers, and listen to streams. Next, I started trying combinations of small words to create dog-speak that made sense and, just as importantly, could be easily pronounced when read aloud. Finally, after about 50 revisions and multiple rejections, Jenna Pocius, my agent, found the perfect home for the story at Chronicle Books.

My next picture book, illustrated by K-Fai Steele and also published by Chronicle, is slated for May. This one will be very different, as it’s titled Does a Bulldozer Have a Butt? and is written in rhyme. But one common thread is that it was also inspired by a real-life event—my young daughter was in the back seat as we stopped behind a school bus and blurted out, “Look Daddy, the school bus has a butt!” It was a brilliant, childlike perspective that I would never have thought of… she wants royalties.

For readers who want to know more about Derick, please click on the following link:  https://www.derickwilder.com/

The Charlotte area is home to a number of remarkable picture book authors and illustrators, including Vanessa Brantley-Newton, Gail Haley, Brandon Reese, and Alicia D. Williams.  I am pleased to add Derick Wilder’s name to my list of Storied Charlotte picture book authors.

Tags: dogpicture book

Experiencing New York’s 19th-Century Theater Scene with Paula Martinac

December 05, 2021 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

Novelist Paula Martinac has established herself as one of Charlotte’s leading lesbian writers, but she is also known for her well-researched historical fiction.  Over the course of her career, she has written several novels set during the middle decades of the 20th century, such as Testimony, a novel about a professor who teaches at a private college for women in rural Virginia in the early 1960s.  However, Paula’s most recent novel, Dear Miss Cushman (Bywater Books), is her first work of historical fiction that is set during the 19th century.  

Dear Miss Cushman takes place in New York City during the 1850s.  It is told from the point of view of Georgiana “Georgie” Cartwright, a young woman who aspires to be a professional actress.  Georgie’s role model is Charlotte Cushman, who was a real 19th-century American actress.  In Paula’s novel, Georgie initiates correspondence with Charlotte Cushman, which explains the title of the novel.  In many ways, this novel is a coming-of-age story in which a young woman forges an identity that transcends the confines of traditional, 19th-century gender roles.  It is also, however, an immersion into the colorful theater scene as it existed in antebellum America.

For more information about this novel, please click on the following link:  https://www.bywaterbooks.com/product/dear-miss-cushman-by-paula-martinac/  For readers who would like to learn more about Paula and her publications, please click on the following link:  http://paulamartinac.com/ 

I contacted Paula and asked her how she went about researching and writing Dear Miss Cushman.  Here is what she sent to me:

Dear Miss Cushman grew out of my awe for people of the distant past who pursued same-sex relationships or presented as physically different from the sex assigned them at birth—even though there wasn’t any queer identity as we now know it. The self-awareness and self-reliance they must have had amazes me. For example, real-life American actress Charlotte Cushman (1816-1876) not only forged her career playing roles written for men, like Romeo and Hamlet, but engaged in long-term romantic relationships with equally accomplished women. How were these women able to discover who they were?

I’ve always loved theater and I’ve had some plays produced, so Cushman seemed like a ripe topic for my fiction. Even so, I didn’t want to be confined by her biography. When I read that she had a following of adoring young female fans, including aspiring actresses, my character Georgiana “Georgie” Cartwright was born, along with the idea that Georgie might write Cushman letters asking for advice.

I’d never written a novel set in the 19th century, and it required a daunting amount of research. As I wrote, I kept having to go back and do even more research, digging up little details to make Georgie’s world feel real. Still, the process went quickly and was a lot of fun, aided by a 2019-2020 Creative Renewal Fellowship from the Arts and Science Council. The fellowship allowed me to turn down a few teaching gigs, giving me time to devote to the project. I was also able to make a research trip to Wilmington to visit Thalian Hall, one of the only remaining mid-19th-century theaters in the country, which still has its original painted curtain and a “thunder roll” once used to simulate storms. Standing center stage, I could imagine what Georgie saw and felt when she looked out over the footlights and that added texture to the book.

Toward the beginning of Dear Miss Cushman, Georgie writes her first letter to Charlotte Cushman.  In her letter, she writes, “I had the pleasure of accompanying my uncle to The Broadway last night to see your performance of Romeo.  All I can say is thank you, thank you, thank you!”  Well, following Georgie’s lead, all I can say to Paula is thank you, thank you, thank you for the memorable contributions to Storied Charlotte’s ever-expanding library.

Tags: 19th centuryhistorical fictionlesbian writers