I recently received an email from the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation informing me that Library Giving Day is Tuesday, April 4, 2023.  I’m a big supporter of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, so I decided to find out more about Library Giving Day.  After a few email exchanges with various people associated with our public library, I ended up getting in touch with Jenni Gaisbauer, the Executive Director of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation.  She provided me the following statement about Library Giving Day:

Next Tuesday, April 4, is National Library Giving Day, a day where library advocates join together to raise crucial funds that add more to the story. More programs, more access, more story times, more tutoring sessions, more digital literacy, and of course, more books. I hope you will join us in celebrating our Library by making a gift of any level. Let’s continue the legacy of free access to information and learning opportunities for everyone in Mecklenburg County and beyond.

For more information about Library Giving Day, please click on the following link:  https://foundation.cmlibrary.org/library-giving-day/

One of the reasons why I am supporting Library Giving Day is because our public library system provides the children in our community with memorable and meaningful experiences.  When children visit their local library, they do more than check out books or participate in various programs.  They also gain a sense of agency.  They can select what books they want to take home. They have opportunities to ask questions, make requests, and express opinions.  They might just be eight years old, but the librarian treats them as a unique patron, not just another kid in a large class.  They also gain a sense of belonging to a community.  They interact with other children in a safe space where everyone is welcome.  Such experiences help make a trip to the library a special event for many children. 

As an English professor with an expertise in children’s literature, I am aware that special library experiences figure prominently in the pages of some wonderful children’s books. 

In Roald Dahl’s Matilda, Matilda is a frequent visitor to her local library where she regularly interacts with Mrs. Phelps, the librarian in charge of the place.  Mrs. Phelps not only helps Matilda find the books that appeal to Matilda, but she fosters Matilda’s sense of self-worth by respecting Matilda’s intelligence and reading tastes.  Matilda’s positive experiences at the library help her cope with the negative environment that she experiences at home.

In Christopher Paul Curtis’s Bud, Not Buddy, Bud also sees his local library as a special place.  As he says, “The air in the library isn’t like the air anywhere else.”  When Bud visits the library in the beginning of the book, the librarian takes him seriously and provides him with clear answers to his questions.   She explains to Bud what an atlas is and helps him figure out how long it would take for him to walk from Flint, Michigan, to Chicago.  By answering his questions, the librarian helps Bud feel valued.  He doesn’t like the news that he learns at the library, but he doesn’t feel dismissed or ignored simply because he is a young African American boy.

In Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family, the five Jewish immigrant sisters who are featured in this novel all visit their local library in the beginning of the story.  These girls live in a Jewish neighborhood on the Lower East Side of New York City during the early years of the 20^th century, but when they go to the library they interact with people from other ethnic and religious backgrounds, including the librarian. The sisters’ positive experiences at the library help them feel connected to people outside of their immediate neighborhood.

In Pat Mora’s Tomás and the Library Lady, Tomás, the son migrant farm workers from Texas, spends his summer in a small Iowa town where he often visits the local library.  When he first enters the library, the library lady welcomes him and invites to sit at his own table.  She then asks him what he would like to read about.  He says that he is interested in “tigers” and “dinosaurs.” She brings him a pile of books about tigers and dinosaurs, and this starts their summer-long relationship.  She introduces him to many books, which he often reads aloud to her. At the end of the summer, Tomás returns to Texas, but he continues to feel a sense of connection with the library lady with whom he shared so many stories during his summer in Iowa.

All of the children in the aforementioned novels look forward to their visits to their local libraries just as so many children in our community look forward to their visits to the local branches of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.  By supporting Library Giving Day, we can help provide the children in Storied Charlotte with the sort of affirming and community-building experiences that often happen when children go to the library where the air isn’t like “anywhere else.”    

For Chris Arvidson, now is a special time of the year.  As a lifelong baseball fan, Chris is looking forward to March 30, which is Opening Day for Major League Baseball’s 2023 season.  As a Charlotte poet, Chris is also looking forward to April, which is National Poetry Month.  Chris’s love of baseball and her interest in writing poetry are reflected in her two most recent books.  In 2017, she published a co-edited volume titled The Love of Baseball:  Essays by Lifelong Fans.  In 2022, she published a poetry collection titled The House Inside My Head.   For readers who want to know more about Chris and her publications, please click on the following link:  https://www.chrisarvidson.com/index.htm

I contacted Chris and asked her how she is preparing for this special week.  Here is what she sent to me:

I have been searching for some Faygo Red Pop, and I’m dismayed to find that neither Harris Teeter nor Publix seems to carry it any longer. Red Pop, a Detroit original, is my favored choice of beverage for opening day. I shall persevere and figure out where to find it before March 30, when my Detroit Tigers play their first game of the season. On March 31, I’ll be at the Charlotte Knights ballpark, in glorious anticipation of the summer to come. I cannot deny that I tear-up for the national anthem that first Spring outing…every time. 

Just last week, I stumbled upon The National Baseball Poetry Festival on Facebook. The organizers are throwing a weekend-long baseball poetry event based at a Boston Red Sox AAA affiliate in Worcester, MA. Events include a poetry contest, ballpark tours, an open mic… not bad for a first-year event. You can see more about the festival at: baseballpoetryfest.org. 

It really made me think–Worcester? Really? Charlotte could TOTALLY do something like this. Maybe even expand it to a whole writing-about-baseball thing, that wouldn’t just be poetry. Although this most poetic of sports certainly does lend itself in that direction. So far, my husband, Henry, thinks it’s a great idea, and Jay Ward, Charlotte’s first poet laureate, sees merit, too. So, stay tuned. I might just see what I can cook up.

I also asked Chris if she would be willing to share examples of her own baseball poems, and she agreed to do so.  The first poem that she provided is about Frances Crockett, the woman who served as the General Manager of the Charlotte O’s.  The Charlotte O’s was the AA affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles from 1976 to 1987.  She was the first woman General Manager in professional baseball.  Here is Chris’s poem:

Dear Frances Crockett

By Chris Arvidson

Just about every day

I walk around the ballpark

Where flags with the pictures of past

Ballplayers, owners, and managers wave to me

The legends of Charlotte baseball.

Yours is my favorite – the only woman

You look so serious and businesslike

So smart and professional

Your blond hair stylish and smooth

It’s not how I remember you.

I see you decades ago out at the old ballpark

The wooden one that sometimes burned

That sat in the middle of a middle-class neighborhood

Through the open door of the rickety trailer near the front gate

That served as your general manager’s office.

You’re sitting at a beat-up old desk

A huge fluffy white dog at your feet

And do I recall a cigarette in one waving hand?

The other holding a phone to your ear

As you conducted the team’s business.

(This poem appeared in “Nine: A Journal of Baseball History & Culture” Vol. 30 Nos. 1-2, Fall/Spring 2021-22.)

The second poem that Chris shared with me is about Ryan Ripken, a minor-league baseball player.  He is the son of baseball legend Cal Ripken, Jr., who played for the Charlotte O’s in 1980.   Here is Chris’s poem:

Hello Ryan Ripken (For Robyn)

By Chris Arvidson

Ryan Ripken came up to bat last night

The designated hitter for the Norfolk Tides

Baltimore’s AAA farm team.

Fluttering in the tepid breeze outside the park

A banner sporting his father’s young face flew

A nostalgic image from Cal the legend’s tenure as a Charlotte Oriole.

Ryan’s twenty-eight now

It looks like Grandpa, Uncle Billy, and Ironman Dad

Will post the big-time family’s big-league careers without him.

He stands tall at bat in the farm team uniform

And takes up more physical space at the plate

Than the other famous Ripkens.

I wonder if he saw that flag on his way into the ballpark tonight

Snapping in the wind over the players’ entrance.

I thank Chris for sharing her baseball poems and for her many contributions to our community.  When it comes to doing her part to make Storied Charlotte a more interesting place to live, Chris is always ready to play ball.

For the second year in a row, many of the independent bookstores located in the Charlotte area are working together during the month of April on a project they call the Greater Charlotte Book Crawl.  Their collaborative book crawl will culminate on April 29, 2023, which is Indie Bookstore Day.  These participating bookstores are encouraging area readers to visit each other’s businesses and get to know what makes each bookstore unique.  For more information about the book crawl, please click on the following link:  https://greatercharlottebookcrawl.com/

Beginning April 1, bookstore lovers can pick up Greater Charlotte Book Crawl (GCBC)
passports at any of the fifteen participating bookstores. Each visit to one of the bookstores during the month of April earns the crawler a new stamp.  The ultimate goal is for participants to visit all fifteen stores. Each “finisher” will earn a special edition GCBC decal designed by Davidson artist Lily Clark. The finishers simply need to show a completed passport at any participating bookstore. Finishers can also submit a photo of their completed passport to be entered in a drawing for the Grand Prize: a collection of gift cards from each of the bookstores.

Last year I visited several of the participating bookstores during the Greater Charlotte Book Crawl, but I did not earn the distinction of being a finisher. However, my friend and university colleague Greg Weeks succeeded in visiting all of the last year’s participating bookstores, and he still has the completed passport to prove it.  I contacted Greg and asked him about his experiences with last year’s book crawl.  Here is what he sent to me:

I am a lifelong lover of bookstores (and especially independent used bookstores), and so last year when I happened to see the news about the Greater Charlotte Book Crawl, I was immediately on board. Nonetheless, I didn’t think I would have time to visit all 11 bookstores in a single month, particularly since a few were quite a drive from my home.

What I found was that once I started, I just had to finish it. It was a great excuse to go places I hadn’t been before, connected by a love of books. The most unique was Shelves, a popup bookstore focusing on African American books. The owner, Abby, had set up at Enderly Coffee in west Charlotte. I bought Daniel Black’s Don’t Cry for Me, which I had never heard of before but ended up recommending to family and friends (and now to anyone reading this).

This year, there are 15 bookstores, even into South Carolina, and my initial reaction is that I don’t have time to do that many in one month. I recently mentioned it to my wife and my teenage daughter, both of whom laughed and assumed I would end up going to them all.

As part of the Greater Charlotte Book Crawl, the participating bookstores are collecting donations for Promising Pages, a Charlotte nonprofit organization that provides area children with their own books.  For more information about Promising Pages, please click on the following link:  https://promising-pages.org/

I urge everyone to participate in this year’s Greater Charlotte Book Crawl by visiting the participating bookstores. Here is the full list of these stores:

• The Book Rack, Charlotte
  Facebook:facebook.com/CharlotteBookRack
• Editions Coffee and Bookstore, Kannapolis
  Website: editionsbookstore.com
• Goldberry Books, Concord
  Website: goldberrybooks.com
• Main Street Books, Davidson
  Website: mainstreetbooksdavidson.com
• Park Road Books, Charlotte
  Website: parkroadbooks.com
• Second Look Books, Harrisburg
  Website: secondlookbooks.org
• That’s Novel Books, Charlotte/Camp North End
  Website: thatsnovelbooks.com
• The Urban Reader, Charlotte
  Website: urbanreaderbook.com
• Walls of Books, Cornelius
  Facebook: facebook.com/WOBCornelius
• The Book Lady, Monroe
  Facebook: The Book Lady
• Book Buyers, Charlotte
  website: bookbuyerscharlotte.com
• The Liberty Book Company, Rock Hill
  website: thelibertybookcompany.com
  Instagram: @libertybookco
• Corks, Cooks, & Books, Rock Hill
  website: corkscooksandbooks.com
• Tall Stories, Rock Hill
  Facebook: Tall Stories Book and Print Gallery
• South Main Book Company, Salisbury
  website: southmainbookcompany.com

The Charlotte area is fortunate to have so many indie bookstores.  Each one of them helps make Storied Charlotte a special place for readers and writers. 

March is National Reading Month. The National Education Association (NEA) launched an early version of this month-long promotion of reading in 1994 as part of its literacy education efforts.  However, it has since transcended its origins as an NEA event and has become a true national celebration of reading.  For more information about National Reading Month, please click on the following link: https://nationaltoday.com/national-reading-month/

One of the goals behind National Reading Month is to encourage a lifelong interest in reading.  Organizers of this event argue that if children develop a love of books and reading while they are young, they are more likely to continue reading as adults.  Childhood reading, in other words, can have a lasting impact on a person’s adult life. I completely agree with this point. 

President Theodore Roosevelt is a perfect example of someone whose childhood reading shaped his adult life.  I happen to know something about Roosevelt’s reading practices as a result of editing a book titled Theodore Roosevelt on Books and Reading.  I just put the finishing touches on the index this past weekend.  For authors and editors of scholarly books, compiling an index is the last hurdle that needs to be cleared before the book is published.  For more information about this forthcoming book, please click on the following link:  https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538175460

In his autobiography, Roosevelt recalled that his parents provided him with a wide variety of books throughout his childhood.  He wrote, “There was very little effort made to compel me to read books, my father and mother having the good sense not to try to get me to read anything I did not like unless it was in the way of study. I was given the chance to read books that they thought I ought to read, but if I did not like them I was then given some other good book that I did like.”  Among the many books that Roosevelt read as a child were adventure novels set in the American West, books about animals and their habitats, and myths and sagas from around the world. 

Many of Roosevelt’s adult interests can be traced back to the books he read as a boy.  The stories that he read about the American West contributed to his decision to move to South Dakota as a young man.  He went on to write several books about the history of the West. The animal books he read as a child caused him to take a scientific interest in natural history.  In fact, when he entered Harvard, his intention was to study zoology.  He eventually switched his emphasis to history, but he remained interested in natural history for the rest of his life. His childhood interest in myths and sagas from many lands played a role in his ongoing fascination with world history.  Throughout his presidency, he often drew on his deep knowledge of world history when making decisions and engaging in international negotiations. 

When Roosevelt’s parents provided their young son with a wide variety of books, they helped Roosevelt develop a lifelong interest in reading.  They also helped prepare Roosevelt for his career as a statesman and as an author of more than forty books. 

Of course, providing children with books is no guarantee that they will grow up to become president, but it does help all children realize their potential.  As we celebrate National Reading Month here in Storied Charlotte, it is important to remember that reading can be a transformative experience.

Given that March is Women’s History Month, now is an especially apropos time to celebrate the many women who have shaped the history of Charlotte’s community of readers and writers.  For the purposes of this blog post, I have selected six such women.  Not all of their names are widely known today, but each of them made a lasting contribution to our community.

Mary Rebecca Denny was the founding chair of the English Department at UNC Charlotte.  In 1946, Bonnie Cone hired Mary Denny as the first full-time faculty member at what was then called the Charlotte Center of the University of North Carolina.  Denny had been an English professor at Queens College (now called Queens University), but she decided to leave her position at Queens College and join forces with Bonnie Cone.  When the Charlotte Center evolved into Charlotte College in 1949, she stayed on and created the English Department.  From 1949 until 1964, she served as the chair of Charlotte College’s English Department.  Shortly after Charlotte College became the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Denny retired, becoming UNC Charlotte’s first professor emerita.  During her time as the chair of the English Department, she founded the college newspaper and a college literary magazine. The Denny Building at UNC Charlotte is named in her honor.

Mary T. Harper played a major role in introducing African American literature to the students at UNC Charlotte and to the larger Charlotte community.  When Dr. Harper joined the university in 1971, she was the first full-time Black faculty member in UNC Charlotte’s English Department.  She played a pivotal role in creating and teaching the first African American literature classes in the department.  In addition to her work at UNC Charlotte, she co-founded (with Dr. Bertha Maxwell-Roddey) the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Afro-American Cultural Center in 1974.  This center is now known as the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture.  In her work with this center, she arranged for community programs and presentations on African American writers.

Irene Blair Honeycutt taught creative writing during her long tenure as a faculty member at Central Piedmont Community College.  In 1993, she founded CPCC’s Spring Literary Festival and served as the director of this festival for fourteen years. This festival expanded into CPCC’s Sensoria Festival, a celebration of literature and the arts. Upon her retirement in 2006, CPCC established the Irene Blair Honeycutt Lifetime Achievement Award.   Besides teaching and doing community engagement work, she published four poetry collections, the most recent of which is Beneath the Bamboo Sky, which came out in 2017.

Adelia Kimball founded the Charlotte Writers Club (CWC) on June 6, 1922, and served as the club’s first president.  She continued to lead the club until 1930 when she moved to New York City to work as an editor for the publisher Louis Carrier & Company.  During her tenure as CWC’s president, she organized and ran the club meetings, arranged for speakers, and helped found the club’s initial writing contest.  Now, more than 100 years after its founding, the Charlotte Writers Club is still going strong.  In recognition of her contributions to the history of the club, the club established the Adelia Kimball Founders Award for “extraordinary service to the CWC and the greater writing community.”

Dannye Romine Powell made her debut on the Charlotte literary scene in 1975 when she became the book editor for The Charlotte Observer.  She remained the paper’s book editor until 1992.  Back in those days, the paper published a two-page book section every Sunday.  It included original book reviews, interviews with authors, and news about local literary events. In her role as book editor, she often interviewed Southern authors.  She decided to collect these interviews in a book titled Parting the Curtains:  Interviews with Southern Writers, which came out in 1995.  In addition to her interview book, she has published five poetry collections, two of which have won the North Carolina Poetry Society’s Brockman-Campbell Award for best book by a North Carolina poet. 

Allegra Westbrooks was an important figure in the history of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library. When she moved to Charlotte in 1947 to manage the Brevard Street Library branch of the public library, the library system was still segregated.  The Brevard Street Library was one of only two branches that served African Americans at the time.  After the library system desegregated in 1956, she moved to the Main Library where she ran the acquisitions operation before being promoted to Supervisor of Branches in 1957, making her the first African American to hold the position of supervisor in the library.  During her career with the library, she played a major role in developing the library’s outreach programs and expanding the library’s branch system.  She collaborated with community groups to make books available to children who did not live near branches, and she started a bookmobile program to bring books to residents throughout the county. In recognition of her many contributions, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Board of Trustees renamed the Beatties Ford Regional Library in her honor.  In April 2020, this branch became known as the Allegra Westbrooks Regional Library.

Each of these six women made lasting contributions to Charlotte’s community of readers and writers.  Storied Charlotte is a better and more vibrant place because of the work and leadership of Mary Rebecca Denny, Mary T. Harper, Irene Blair Honeycutt, Adelia Kimball, Dannye Romine Powell, and Allegra Westbrooks.

The Charlotte Mecklenburg Library is once again sponsoring its Community Read program.  The purpose of this month-long program is to encourage the members of the larger Charlotte community to read and discuss common texts that all deal with a central theme. For this year, the theme is friendship.  For more information about the Community Read program, please click on the following link: https://www.cmlibrary.org/community-read

This year’s Community Read program kicks off on March 1, 2023.  One of the people who is coordinating this program is Meryle Leonard, the Assistant Director of Outreach at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.  I contacted Meryle and asked her for more information about this year’s Community Read program.  Here is what she sent to me:

Don’t miss the opportunity to participate in the biggest book club in Charlotte. Charlotte Mecklenburg Library’s Community Read runs throughout the month of March. The program focuses on creating community dialogue around the theme of friendship.

This year’s signature title is The People We Keep by Allison Larkin. In this story, the main character, April Sawicki, leaves her troubled past behind her determined to live life on her own terms. Making a life for herself, she encounters people and places she never dreamed of. Join April as she chronicles her journey in the beautiful music she creates and discovers home is with The People We Keep.

Read the book and meet the author, Allison Larkin. Allison Larkin will host an online presentation on Tuesday, March 21 at 6:30 p.m. Register for the event and you can win a chance to have Allison Larkin stream into your book club!

The Community Read is for everyone. There are titles for teens, preteens, and young children. These titles also focus on friendships. The Edge of Anything by Nora Shalaway Carpenter is the teen title. The story focuses on the unlikely friendship of two girls facing their inner demons. Uncover Mia Tang’s secrets in the preteen book Front Desk. Mia works in a hotel, hides immigrants, and has big dreams. Follow Mia and see if she finds the courage and kindness to help everyone as she follows her dreams.

The book for young children is The Big Umbrella.  Amy June Bates and her daughter got the idea to write The Big Umbrella after walking to school. Imagine it is raining, and you have a big umbrella. Everyone can fit under the umbrella! It doesn’t matter if you are tall, plaid, or hairy. You don’t have to worry, there will always be enough room for everyone!

There are many ways you can get involved in the Community Read program. Meet the authors. Nora Shalaway Carpenter will be at South County Regional Library on Tuesday, March 7, 2023, at 5:30 p.m. Kelly Yang will host an online presentation on Thursday, March 16, 2023, at 11:30 am. Take the Community Read Challenge. Log your reading and activity time and track your progress. Participate in a program. There are programs for all ages and reading abilities. You can participate in a library-led program or a program led by our community partners. Read the books, meet your neighbors, and come together as a community.

I urge everyone to participate in this year’s Community Read program.  By reading books in common and discussing them together, we can make Storied Charlotte a true community.     

I first got to know Landis Wade in his role as the founder and host (now co-host) of the Charlotte Readers Podcast. In this role, he has interviewed hundreds of writers.  Landis, however, is also an author in his own right.  He has published several books, including Deadly Declarations: An Indie Retirement Mystery, which came out last year. Landis is himself a retired trial lawyer.  He never studied fiction writing during his years as a history major at Davidson College or while earning his J.D. degree at Wake Forest School of Law, but since founding his podcast in 2018, he has learned a lot about the art of writing by interviewing authors.  When writing Deadly Declarations, he drew heavily on the insights he gained through conducting these interviews.  For Landis, hosting the Charlotte Readers Podcast has functioned as his own private M.F.A. program in creative writing.

Landis has now decided to share with the general public some of the insights and pointers that he has learned through hosting Charlotte Readers Podcast.  He has just released The Writing Life, a collection of “inspirational and practical reflections” that he has compiled from some of the interviews that he has conducted with authors.  Intrigued, I contacted Landis and asked him for more information about this project.  Here is what he sent to me:

I did not launch Charlotte Readers Podcast to publish a series of books about writing, but a funny thing happened on the way to and from the studio. The writers who appeared on the podcast inspired me with their tales of how they do what they do and it helped my own writing journey so much that I wanted to give back by sharing what I’d learned. And what better way to do that than to let the authors speak for themselves?

In Book 1 of the series, authors share their honest reflections on The Writing Life. We find inspirational and practical reflections of hard-working, award-winning, and New York Times bestselling authors in more than 33 U.S. states and five countries.

What I found from the quotes in book 1 is that writers grab for their pens and fire up their computers for the love of writing. They have a common urge to create, to use letters, words, and sentences to tell stories, either about themselves, or others, or about characters they create in their writing chambers. They write for therapy or to understand themselves and the world around them. They write for the sake of writing. They write for publication. They write to be remembered. They write to be heard and understood. And as more than one author says, they write because they can’t not write.

Through a painstaking seven-month process of listening to and transcribing excerpts from 500+ audio and video interviews, I realized I had the makings of more than one book. My co-hosts Sarah Archer and Hannah Larrew jumped in and helped me organize the content into eight separate books, and they also wrote forewords for the books. I wrote reflections for each book about what I learned from the quotes in each book.

Authors quoted in book 1 include David Baldacci, Therese Anne Fowler, Steve Berry, Lisa Jewell, John Hart, Sophie Cousens, Ron Rash, C.J. Box, Craig Johnson, Wylie Cash, Kristy Harvey, Brad Taylor, Charlie Lovett, Judy Goldman, Chris Fabry, Amber Smith, Tracy Clark, John Gilstrap, Kimmery Martin, A.J. Hartley, Clyde Edgerton, Jill McCorkle, Jason Mott, Mark de Castrique, Cathy Pickens, Mark West, David Joy, and many more local, regional, and nationally recognized authors.

Eight print books will release monthly, beginning March 1^st, and ebooks 2 through 8 in the series will release monthly, beginning April 1^st. We decided to make the first ebook our gift to the writing universe. It can be downloaded for FREE at this universal link: HERE. 

Charlotte Readers Podcast began with the tagline: “where authors give voice to their written words.” With this series, we’ve flipped the tagline to: “where authors give text to their spoken words.”

Readers who are interested in learning more about Landis’s latest project are in luck. On March 1^st, from 6:00 to 7:00 pm on Zoom, there will be a community conversation celebrating the release of Book 1, where the founders of Charlotte Lit and the three podcast co-hosts engage in a wide-ranging discussion with participants about The Writing Life, prompted by some of the best and most useful quotes in the book. Anyone can sign up for FREE for this conversation HERE.

I congratulate Landis on the publication of The Writing Life, and I look forward to the release of the other volumes in this series.  The contributions that Landis has made to Storied Charlotte are many and varied, and they now include a unique and insightful series of books about writing.

Valentine’s Day is not just about candy, flowers, and jewelry.  It’s also about stories. For readers who enjoy relationship stories, I have two book recommendations that have Charlotte connections.  One is The Plus One by Sarah Archer, and the other is Love and Valentines at Caynham Castle, a collection of five Valentine’s Day-themed novellas.  Both books are perfect for Valentine’s Day.

I first got to know Sarah Archer in her role as a co-host of the Charlotte Readers Podcast.  I heard her talk about The Plus One on the podcast, and I was intrigued when she described the novel as a romance story involving a woman and a robot.  I contacted Sarah and asked her for more information about the book and how she came to write it.  Here is what she sent to me: 

I’ve always loved an off-kilter romance, so when I had the idea of a robotics engineer who builds the perfect boyfriend, I immediately began playing out scenarios in my head. At first, I envisioned the story as a female-led version of the 1980s comedy Weird Science, but I knew from the start that my engineer would spend more than one wacky day and night with her robot—I wanted to see where this pairing could go if given the time to truly develop as a relationship. And while my background up to that point was primarily in screenwriting, I had wanted to write a novel since childhood, and this seemed like a fun entry point, so I decided to give it a go.

This premise offered a playing field on which to explore issues around AI and robotics technology (the new ChatGPT bot is scarily similar to some of the mechanisms behind my robotic romantic interest, Ethan), but also allowed me really to explore my human characters: what they look for in relationships, how they define love. The protagonist, Kelly, balks at the traditional expectations for love and relationships that society—and especially her mother, who runs a bridal boutique—have placed upon her. When we meet her at the beginning of the novel, she would doubtless prefer to spend this Valentine’s time of year at home by herself in a Slanket, watching a favorite movie, “baking” a cake for one in the microwave. The heart of the book is really about Kelly finding not just who she wants to be with, but who she wants to be, and I hope we can all embrace that theme around Valentine’s Day.

I was fortunate to get traditionally published, and the process of writing and promoting this book has taught me so much about the fiction world, and created opportunities for me to meet many wonderful writers and readers who are now my critique partners, social media buddies, and friends. In particular, it’s been an excellent bridge into the local Charlotte writing community. When the book was released, I had only moved to the area a month before. But I made an effort to dive in and start connecting with organizations like the Charlotte Writers Club as soon as I got here, and when I gave a reading at Park Road Books right after the novel’s launch, I was so pleased to see the seats filled by some of my new literary friends. I knew already I had stepped into an engaged and supportive writerly scene.

Since publishing The Plus One, I’ve been working on other novels, as well as several screenwriting and poetry projects, and have more recently fallen in love with the short story form. While some of my newer works are more literary in bent, I continue to enjoy any writing that straddles some kind of boundary, whether it’s the intersection of rom-com and sci-fi in The Plus One, or the line between drama and comedy, or reality and the otherworldly. I’m excited to be part of an expansive writing community here in Charlotte that embraces writers of every stripe and genre.

For readers who want to know more about Sarah and her writing, please click on the following link:  https://saraharcherwrites.com/

Even though Love and Valentines at Caynham Castle is set in England, the collection has significant associations with Charlotte since three of the five contributors are current or past residents of Charlotte.  One of these writers is Nancy Northcott (who happens to be my wife). I asked her for more information about this collection, and here’s what she sent to me:

Love and Valentines at Caynham Castle is the fourth in a series of holiday-themed romance anthologies set around an ancient English castle that’s now a hotel. The authors in this collection of novellas include Charlotte’s Morgan Brice (pen name of Gail Z. Martin) and Nancy Northcott and former Charlotte resident Caren Crane. The anthology offers various types of romances. In addition to the stories referenced below, there’s a paranormal featuring Greek gods and an ancient pub and a romantic suspense tale centered on a racing stable and a set of cursed racing silks. 

The One Who Got Away (by Nancy Northcott) is a second-chance-at-love story. Hastings Whitney grew up driven not only to succeed but to be seen to succeed. His focus on success cost him two marriages and any number of relationships. Now he has a second chance with the woman he never forgot, jewelry designer Corinne Lanier. Has he changed enough to balance work with a relationship? Or will a business crisis bring old habits back to the fore? And is there a sinister side to his problem?

Fae-ted Mates (by Morgan Brice) is part of the Kings of the Mountain MM romance fantasy series featuring Dawson and Grady King.  Dawson and Grady King are honeymooning at Caynham Castle, hoping to take a break from monster hunting. They have one piece of family business to handle, involving a generations-long agreement with the Welsh Fae. However, things go wrong, and Dawson and Grady are in danger of being trapped in the Faerie realm forever.

Romance Sells Records (by Caren Crane) features a heroine who is not interested in relationships.  After watching her mother’s hope for a grand romance get dashed time after time, Hannah Evans grew into someone with no tolerance for romance. Callum Hughes’ parents had an enviable relationship, and he wanted the same for himself: if only he could he convince Hannah to trust what they could build together.

The relationship stories included in these two books vary in significant ways, which is fitting since they feature characters who are quite different from each other.   However, these tales all have Storied Charlotte connections, and they all are great stories to read on Valentine’s Day.