Monthly Archives: February 2022

Pamela Grundy’s Legacy: Three Centuries of Black History in Charlotte, North Carolina: How the Book Came to Be

February 21, 2022 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

Community historian Pamela Grundy’s latest book, Legacy: Three Centuries of Black History in Charlotte, North Carolina, has an official publication date of February 25, 2022.  However, the book’s origin story goes back to 2017 when the University of North Carolina Press published her earlier book titled Color and Character: West Charlotte High and the American Struggle over Educational Equality.  At the time, Ryan Pitkin wrote for Charlotte’s Creative Loafing, and he interviewed Pamela about Color and Character.  Not long after he conducted this interview, Creative Loafing shut down, but Ryan and some of the other former staff members of Creative Loafing banded together and launched Queen City Nerve in 2019.  In his role as Editor-in-Chief of Queen City Nerve, Ryan reconnected with Pamela, and she became one of Queen City Nerve’s contributors.   

Pamela wrote a seven-part series for Queen City Nerve on the Black history of Charlotte.  The first installment of this series appeared in Queen City Nerve on July 31, 2020, and the series concluded in 2021.  With some editorial assistance from Ryan, Pamela expanded this series into a book, and the result is Legacy: Three Centuries of Black History in Charlotte, North Carolina, which Queen City Nerve is publishing as a paperback and as an e-book.   For more information about this book, please click on the following link:  https://qcnerve.com/legacy/

In her Author’s Note, Pamela writes, “I’ve drawn on sources that include census records, newspapers, family documents, photographs and oral history interviews to offer an overview of the lives, challenges, and accomplishments of the many generations of African Americans who have lived in the Charlotte area.” https://qcnerve.com/legacy-black-history-in-charlotte/ Ryan adds, “Pamela’s steadfast work has resulted in an engrossing, comprehensive look at Black History in Charlotte, and I have learned so much during this process that I can’t wait to share with our readers.” Since February is Black History Month, it is fitting that Legacy: Three Centuries of Black History in Charlotte, North Carolina will be officially published this month. This book provides readers with a concise overview of the history of Black culture in Charlotte.  As Pamela documents in her book, African Americans have played important roles in the history of Storied Charlotte from the origins of the city to the present day.    

Take Back the Block: Chrystal D. Giles’s Middle-Grade Novel about the Making of a Young Activist

February 14, 2022 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

Chrystal D. Giles’s debut novel, Take Back the Block, takes on the timely issue of gentrification and its impact on Black neighborhoods. As Chrystal makes clear in her “Author’s Note” at the end of the novel, the “story is loosely based on my hometown of Charlotte. … Charlotte is experiencing an affordable-housing crisis brought on, in part, by gentrification.”  Chrystal provides more information about her background and her Charlotte connections on her website:  https://www.chrystaldgiles.com/

In her novel, a sixth-grade boy named Wes Henderson learns that his neighborhood of Kensington Oaks (which is based on several Black neighborhoods in Charlotte) is on the verge of being purchased by a real estate developer.  If the deal goes through, Wes’s family and his neighborhood friends would all have to leave their homes.  This news troubles Wes. “There is no way I could leave,” he says. “The Oaks is my home.  I’ve done everything here—met my best friends, learned how to ride a bike, made my first three-pointer on the court at the park. … How could I leave all of that?”  Although he would rather spend his time playing video games, Wes speaks up on behalf of his neighborhood.  He gradually takes on the role of a community activist, and he succeeds in winning over others to his cause. 

I recently contacted Chrystal and asked her how she came to write Take Back the Block.  Here is her response:

I wouldn’t consider my path to publication a traditional one. In fact, I never even considered writing professionally as a path for myself until just several years ago. That said, I have always been a lover of books and the art of storytelling, so maybe my real journey starts with my childhood.

As a young child, I was happiest in a corner by myself reading. One of my favorite things was returning from the local public library with a stack of books; I’d spend hours sinking into a new world. Books were my first friends. That love of books did continue throughout my teenage years but I ultimately chose a career in accounting and finance and books took a backseat to my job, my family, and life in general.

That love of books did come rushing back when my husband and I started preparations for my son’s birth in 2015. We began collecting books for his library; we bought all the classics and some new stories. Then I started looking for very specific books—books that reflected my Black family—stories of us just living, learning, and being champions of our own worlds.

I was saddened that those books didn’t exist in the way I pictured them in my mind. After doing some research, I was even more saddened by the statistics on diversity in children’s literature and I set out on a path to write stories with Black children at the center.

After writing, editing, querying, and receiving rejections on several picture books, I decided to take a topic from a story I was working on and expand it into a middle-grade novel. That topic was gentrification and the displacement of people from marginalized communities. My hometown of Charlotte—like many other American cities—is experiencing rapid gentrification, and I wanted to provide an up-close view of a community fighting to remain whole. Take Back the Block was born.

It is incredibly hard to debut a novel during a pandemic but I am thrilled at all the recognition it has received. Perhaps, I am most proud it has been selected as a featured title for this year’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library’s Community Read program under the theme of urban renewal and gentrification. What a great way to get books directly into the hands of local readers and continue some needed conversations.

Be on the lookout for my next novel, it is set to publish in early 2023 from Random House Books for Young Readers.

In writing Take Back the Block, Chrystal shows how political activism often grows out of a simple decision to speak up.  When Wes speaks up for his neighborhood, he begins forging a new identity as a community activist.  As we celebrate Black History Month, it is important to remember that Charlotte’s most famous civil rights leaders all spoke up, called attention to injustice, and advocated for marginalized peoples. They made their voices heard, and in the process, they helped shape the history of Storied Charlotte.

Tags: gentrificationnovel

Gail Z. Martin and Larry N. Martin:  Charlotte’s Writing Duo

February 07, 2022 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

The art of writing fiction does not lend itself to collaboration. It is hard for two people to write in the same voice and share the same vision for the unfolding of a story.  Every once in a long while, however, two fiction writers are so in synch with each other that they are able to create stories together.  Such is the case with Gail Z. Martin and Larry N. Martin.  This married couple collaborates on every aspect of fiction writing, from constructing initial plotlines and envisioning central characters all the way down to revising individual sentences. 

Known for their fantasy adventures novels, Gail and Larry are among Charlotte’s most prolific writers.  Together or separately, they have published in the neighborhood of fifty books.  Both Gail and Larry have written successful novels on their own.  Gail Martin’s first big success came in 2007 with the publication of the epic fantasy novel The Summoner, the first of the four novels in the Chronicles of the Necromancer series. She then went on to write many more fantasy novels, novellas, and short stories.  Larry is the author of Salvage Rat, a science fiction novel published in 2018 as well as other works.  Together, however, they have written dozens of fantasy books, including the recently released Wasteland Marshals: Volume One, a collection of four related novellas set in a post-apocalyptic world.

I recently contacted Gail and asked her for more information about her collaborative writing with Larry.  Here is what she sent to me:

Larry N. Martin and I are a married writing team. I have been writing all my life and Larry has always been a very important behind-the-scenes part of the writing process since before my first book, The Summoner, was published in 2007. We’ve been “officially” co-authoring series since Iron & Blood in 2015. He took on a full-time role in 2011 when he left his corporate job, and since then writing and publishing is the Martin family business. We now have four series under the Gail Z. Martin/Larry N. Martin flag.

Regardless of the name on the cover, the process is the same for all the books. I usually do the first draft, and then send it to him for revisions, questions, ideas, and refinement. We trade the manuscript back and forth until it’s in the final format (which can be a dozen or more revisions) and then on our self-published books he handles the formatting while I contract the editing and cover art, and handle the marketing/advertising. Since we average publishing a book a month among the differing cover names (Gail Z. Martin/Morgan Brice/Gail Z. Martin & Larry N. Martin), that keeps us pretty busy! We have 12 active series that span epic and urban fantasy, steampunk, post-apocalyptic adventure, portal fantasy, space opera, and MM paranormal romance.

The Wasteland Marshals series is “Boondock Saints meets The Walking Dead” with a dash of Supernatural (only oddly enough, a bit more hopeful). It’s an action-packed near-future post-apocalyptic thriller full of grim ghosts, legendary creatures, shifters and elemental spirits, brave survivors, loyal friends, and found family. 

Shane Collins and Lucas Maddox are the last two US Marshals after a global cataclysm that destroyed most of modern civilization. They’re still on the job, fighting the good fight, although they’re no longer fully human and maybe not entirely sane. Their territory is primarily Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Maryland. The books frequently happen in places where Larry and I grew up, so it’s fun to work in those familiar spots with a whole new twist. 

Wasteland Marshals: Volume One came out on February 1 and includes the first four novellas: Wasteland Marshals, Witch of the Woods, Ghost of the Past, and Shutdown Crew. Each of those novellas was originally published individually in ebook and paperback. The omnibus is available in ebook, paperback, hardcover, and–hopefully in the near future–audiobook, from Falstaff Books. We have a new contract with Falstaff for two longer books in the Wasteland Marshals series in 2022-2023. 

For readers who want to know more about Gail and Larry and their various books, please click on the following link:  https://ascendantkingdoms.com/  For a guided tour of the places used in the Wasteland Marshals series, please click on the following link:  https://youtu.be/ni-4uvsOuIU  Larry talked about the Wasteland Marshals series on a panel discussion as part of the ConTinual online convention.  To hear his comments, click on this link: https://www.facebook.com/1340269512/videos/419561259954889/

The collaborative work of Gail and Larry Martin is one of the reasons why Storied Charlotte is known as a center for fantasy and science fiction writing. 

Tags: fantasy adventure novelsfiction writing