novels

Summer Escapes 

June 29, 2024 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

I am an English professor, but I do not limit my reading to scholarly texts and profound books. I also enjoy the experience of getting lost in an engaging genre novel. There are those who disparage such stories as escapist fiction, but I do not see escapism as a bad thing. One of the reasons why people read for leisure is to escape their everyday lives for a few hours, to get swept up in the experiences of other people, and to travel (albeit vicariously) to other places and times. I have great respect for authors who provide their readers with such pleasurable escapes. Two Charlotte-area authors who excel in this type of writing are Alissa DeRogatis and Lisa Williams Kline.  Both authors have new novels that are ideal for readers who are seeking summer escapes. 

Alissa recently burst on Charlotte’s writing scene with her new novel titled Call It What You Want.  My friends at Park Road Books told me that Alissa’s book is getting a lot of buzz among their customers this summer, so I decided to contact Alissa and ask her for more information about her novel.  Here is what she sent to me:

Call It What You Want is my debut novel. Originally self-published in 2023, it was re-released under Sourcebooks Landmark on June 18, 2024. It’s a contemporary fiction novel that follows college senior Sloane Hart, who’s never had a serious relationship and doesn’t plan on it now. Sloane wants to spend her last year focusing on finding a job so that she can move to New York and pursue her dream of being a writer. When she meets her neighbor Ethan Brady, she falls for him hard and fast. Ethan doesn’t want a girlfriend, and Sloane can’t imagine her life without him. Nostalgic, heartfelt, and profoundly cathartic, Call It What You Want is an ode to almost-love stories—the kinds with no labels, no promises, and the potential to turn your entire world upside down.

As a communication major and journalism minor (and a proud UNC Charlotte alum) I’ve always loved to write, but I never had any intentions of publishing a novel until I found myself in a similar relationship to Sloane. When that relationship ended, and I was in the early stages of heartbreak, I was tired of reading happily ever afters. I wanted a book that understood me. So, I started writing Call It What You Want.

Its journey to publication is a wild one—it’s rare and my greatest accomplishment. After its initial self-published release in June 2023, it blew up on TikTok. Within two weeks, it was charting on Amazon (#1 in New Adult and College Fiction, #38 in overall books). I signed a contract with my agent at CAA in July and a two-book deal with Sourcebooks in August. Thanks to a heartbreak and a whirlwind of a summer, I’m now a full-time author. I’m currently working on my second novel, which is expected to be published in 2025.

For readers who want to know more about Alissa and her writing, please click on the following link: www.alissaderogatis.com

I first met Lisa Kline in 2017 when she gave a guest presentation to one of the creative writing classes at UNC Charlotte.  At the time, I was serving as the Chair of the English Department, and she came by my office after her presentation.  We talked a bit about her writing career, and she told me about her books for children and young adults.  Since then, Lisa has turned to writing novels for adult readers, including her recently published work of historical romance titled Between the Sky and the Sea. I contacted Lisa and asked her for more information about this novel.  Here is what she sent to me:

The discovery of the remains of the steamship Pulaski thirty-five miles off the coast of North Carolina in 2018 fascinated me. I devoured the Charlotte Observer articles about the exploration of the 1838 wreck, and then did further research. I read articles by survivors and historians that described the ship built for speed, the electrifying explosion, the loss of hundreds of lives and thousands of gold pieces. I happened to stumble upon an article from the Delaware Gazette from 1838 that described how a Mr. Ridge from New Orleans and a Miss Onslow from Savannah had survived on two floating settees. When the ship sank, they had seen each other on board, possibly felt drawn to each other, but had not been introduced. When they were rescued four days later, they were engaged. Was this story true? Some think it might have been the invention of a reporter, but it continued to fascinate me. Did they indeed marry? If so, how might their marriage have fared, forged during four such unforgettable days? 

The idea took hold, and I couldn’t let go. I wrote the book during Covid, and I found the publisher, Dragonblade Publishing, on a tip from my writer friend Betsy Thorpe.  Published in 2023, the book has been a book club favorite, to my delight. 

I was recently thrilled to learn that Between the Sky and the Sea has been named a 2024 Next Generation Indies Award Finalist in the Romance category. Between the Sky and the Sea is in stock at The Trope Bookshop in Charlotte and can be ordered by Park Road Books and Main Street Books and of course online. 

For readers who want to know more about Lisa and her writing, please click on the following link: www.lisawilliamskline.com

I thank Alissa and Lisa for providing me with information about their new novels and for providing everyone in Storied Charlotte with such entertaining and well-told stories.

Tags: novelsSummer Reading

Celebrating the South’s LGBTQ Literary Tradition with Paula Martinac

June 14, 2021 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

Given that June is Pride Month, I thought that now would be an especially good time to celebrate the South’s LGBTQ literary tradition and that Paula Martinac would be an especially good person to write on this topic. 

Paula is one of Charlotte’s leading LGBTQ fiction writers.  In recent years, Paula has published three novels about lesbian characters who have Southern connections.  The first of these novels, The Ada Decades, came out in 2017.  Set in Charlotte, this novel covers the evolving relationship Ada Shook, a school librarian, and Cam Lively, a teacher in the Charlotte public schools.  In 2019, Paula published Clio Rising, a novel about a young woman who leaves her home in North Carolina and relocates to New York in 1983 so that she can pursue a career in publishing and because she feels that she can live openly as a lesbian in New York.  Paula’s most recent novel, Testimony, came out this January.  It tells the story of Gen Rider, a professor who teaches at a private college for women in rural Virginia in the early 1960s and who becomes the target of an anti-LGBTQ campaign.   For more information about Paula’s writings, please click on this link:  http://paulamartinac.com/

I recently contacted Paula and asked her about how her novels relate to other books by Southern LGBTQ writers.  Here is what she sent to me:

The South has a rich LGBTQ literary tradition, including luminaries such as Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams, Alice Walker, Truman Capote, and Dorothy Allison. Novelist Michael Nava says of writers from this region, “Southern writers have a different and compelling story to tell us about the experience of being queer.” 

Although I’m originally from the North, I came of age as a writer reading authors like McCullers and Eudora Welty, so living in the South didn’t feel “foreign” to me. My novel-in-stories, The Ada Decades, set in Charlotte, came about by roaming through my neighborhood of NoDa and soaking up the atmosphere of the old cotton mill village. In the book, a white school librarian named Ada Shook grapples with the intersections of race, queer sexuality, and class over the course of seven decades from 1947 to 2015. She and her partner, Cam, must be closeted because of their jobs at a local public school, but they also enjoy a fulfilling private life with a circle of close friends. 

Writing Ada required a lot of research, and I leaned on works by queer Southern writers. Novelist Jim Grimsley’s How I Shed My Skin: Unlearning the Lessons of a Racist Childhood is a powerful memoir about growing up white, poor, and gay in eastern North Carolina during Jim Crow and the early days of school integration. Grimley’s gradual realization about how sheltered he’d been from Black children struck a chord with me—I grew up in Pittsburgh in a white suburb and first met a Black girl in high school.

Another Southern queer writer whose work informed mine was Lillian D. Smith (1897-1966). A white lesbian, Smith is best remembered for writing Strange Fruit, a novel about miscegenation. But she also authored a nonfiction book called Killers of the Dream, a keen critique of racism and segregation that is as relevant today as it was in 1949 when it was published.

I also turned again to Carson McCullers, who lived in Charlotte in the late 1930s while she was writing The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. As a white woman, I learned as much as I could from McCullers about writing characters of color in an authentic way. There’s an excellent new book by Jenn Shapland that explores McCullers’s queerness, titled My Autobiography of Carson McCullers; it was shortlisted for a National Book Award and won top LGBTQ literary prizes.

For those interested in Southern LGBTQ experience, I’d also recommend these compelling works of fiction:

  • Dorothy Allison, Trash—stories that explore being “a cross-eyed working-class lesbian, addicted to violence, language, and hope” in South Carolina
  • Leona Beasley, Something Better Than Home—novel about growing up queer in a religious Black family in Georgia
  • Meredith Russo, If I Was Your Girl—YA about a white transgender girl who transfers to a new school in Tennessee
  • Bryan Washington, Lot—interconnected stories about the coming of age of a young Black/Latino gay man in Houston

My thanks go to Paula for her reflections on the Southern LGBTQ literary tradition.  The LGBTQ movement has a political dimension, but it also has a literary side.  Paula reminds us that there are many great literary works that deal with the Southern LGBTQ experience, and one way to celebrate Pride Month is to read these works.  As Paula acknowledges, her novels are part of this larger LGBTQ literary movement/tradition.  Storied Charlotte is a richer place because of the contributions of Paula and other LGBTQ writers.

Tags: lesbian charactersLGBTQ fiction writersnovelsSouthern LGBTQ experience

Paula Martinac’s Testimony

January 25, 2021 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

For much of her life, novelist Paula Martinac lived in either Pittsburgh or New York City, but she and her wife moved to Charlotte in 2014.  Since then, Paula has published three historical novels about lesbian characters who have Southern connections.  The first of these novels, The Ada Decades, came out in 2017.  Set in Charlotte between 1947 and 2015, this novel traces the evolving relationship between Ada Shook, a school librarian, and Cam Lively, a teacher in the Charlotte public schools.  In 2019, Paula published Clio Rising, a novel about a young woman named Livvie Bliss who leaves her home in North Carolina and relocates to New York in 1983 so that she can pursue a career in publishing and because she feels that she can live openly as a lesbian in New York.  Paula’s most recent novel, Testimony, came out this month from Bywater Books.  It tells the story of Gen Rider, a professor who teaches at a private college for women in rural Virginia in the early 1960s.   Gen’s career is threatened when a neighbor reports to the local police that she has seen Gen kissing a woman.  Testimony is a powerful story that underscores the destructive nature of LGBTQ discrimination that was commonplace in the South and elsewhere in America during the 1950s and ‘60s. 

Although Testimony is a historical novel, I think that it also speaks to contemporary issues and concerns.  I recently contacted Paula and asked her for more information about how this novel relates to our current situation.  Here is what she sent to me:

A couple of years back, I’d finished writing my novel Clio Rising, and I was toying with ideas for what my next book might be. In my research, I stumbled on an article about Martha Deane, a tenured professor at UCLA in the 1950s who was fired because a neighbor reported her “moral turpitude”—she’d been seen kissing another woman through the window of her own home.

As I looked more closely at the period, I discovered many stories about repression at universities. The infamous Johns Committee in Florida systematically rooted out queer teachers and students through the mid-1960s. The esteemed literature professor and scholar, Newton Arvin, a gay man, lost his position at Smith in 1960 for keeping a private collection of nude photos of men.

My novel Testimony took its inspiration from stories like Deane’s and Arvin’s. Their experiences highlighted the issue of who gets to enjoy privacy, and, at the same time, who gets to be public about their relationships.

It’s no coincidence that I started writing Testimony during a new wave of anti-LGBTQ sentiment and activism. According to a report from Lambda Legal Defense, the Trump administration “ushered in a judicial landscape that is significantly more hostile toward LGBTQ people.” On the positive side, Deane’s story in particular spoke to the power of the support networks queer people and women create. I hope Testimony leaves readers with a sense of the LGBTQ community’s amazing resilience and also the importance of straight allies who speak up.

For readers who would like to learn more about Paula and her publications, please click on the following link:  http://paulamartinac.com/  For readers who are interested in taking Paula’s upcoming Charlotte Lit workshop called “Start to Finish: The 10-Minute Play,” please click on the following link: www.charlottelit.org

Like her character Gen, Paula teaches on the college level.  She regularly teaches creative writing courses as a part-time faculty member in UNC Charlotte’s English Department. When the publication of Testimony was announced to the members of the English Department last week, Paula was inundated with congratulatory email messages.  As a member of the English Department, I share my colleagues’ pride in Paula’s latest publication.  In fact, I think everyone associated with Storied Charlotte can take pride in the fact that Paula has established herself as one of Charlotte’s leading novelists. 

Tags: anti-LGBTQlesbian charactersnovels

Of Anchors, Books, and Juggling Women

May 17, 2020 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

My guess is that in other cities television news anchors and radio broadcasters don’t generally write books, but in Charlotte it’s another story.   This month Molly Grantham, a WBTV news anchor, published her second book, The Juggle Is Real:  The Off-Camera Life of an On-Camera Mom.  Grantham is not the only Charlotte-area anchor or broadcaster to have published multiple books.  Sheri Lynch of the Bob and Sheri radio show has also published two books, and the former news anchor Robert Inman has published numerous books.   

Grantham’s The Juggle Is Real is a follow-up volume to her first book, Small Victories, which came out in 2017.  In fact, both books share the same subtitle:  The Off-Camera Life of an On-Camera Mom.  Grantham wrote her first book while on maternity leave.  It started as a series of Facebook posts that she wrote on a weekly basis shortly after the birth of her second child.  Small Victories has a candid and humorous feel to it.  The Juggle Is Real is just as candid has her first book, but it is more serious in tone.  The book opens with Grantham recounting her visit with her dying mother.  From there she writes about experiences of juggling her job and her responsibilities as a parent while working from home because of the coronavirus pandemic.  Grantham includes lots of humorous observations in this memoir, but it is all set against the sobering backdrop of our current public health crisis.  For more information about Grantham’s books, please click on the following link:  https://www.mollygrantham.com/

Grantham’s two memoirs are perfect shelf mates to Sheri Lynch’s two books about motherhood:  Hello, My Name Is Mommy:  The Dysfunctional Girl’s Guide to Having, Loving (and Hopefully Not Screwing Up) a Baby, published in 2004; and Be Happy or I’ll Scream!:  My Deranged Quest for the Perfect Husband, Family, and Life, published in 2007.  Both Grantham and Lynch have a knack for writing self-deprecating humor, but Lynch’s humor is a bit edgier than Grantham’s.  Like Grantham, Lynch writes about the difficulties of juggling her family life and her career, but Lynch’s juggling act often doubles as a comedy act.  For more information about Lynch’s career, please click on the following link:  https://bobandsheri.com/bio/

Of the Charlotte-area news anchors who have also published books, no one can match the record of Robert Inman.  From 1979 to 1996, Inman worked as a news anchor for WBTV, but he took an interest in writing novels in the mid-1980s.  He published his first novel, Home Fires Burning, in 1987.  In 1996, he decided to step down as a news anchor and become a full-time writer of novels, plays, screenplays, and essays.  For more information about Inman’s books, please click on the following link:  http://robert-inman.com/about-the-author

Inman’s most recent novel, The Governor’s Lady, came out in 2013.  Like Grantham’s and Lynch’s memoirs, this novel deals with the experiences of a woman attempting to juggle multiple roles and expectations.  In the case of The Governor’s Lady, the central character is Cooper Lanier, the wife of an ambitious southern governor who decides to run for President of the United States. Her husband concocts a plan for her to succeed him as governor so that he can devote more time to his presidential campaign.  However, when she is elected governor, she finds herself torn between being a stand-in for her husband and following her own ideas and plans.  The result is a story that combines family dynamics and political intrigue.

For Molly Grantham, Sheri Lynch, and Robert Inman, the demands associated with their broadcasting careers have not prevented them from launching new careers as authors.  All three of them have written memorable books about the realities of contemporary women’s lives, and Storied Charlotte is richer for it.

Tags: family lifehumorjuggling lifemotherhoodnews anchorsnovelsradio broadcasters