Halloween is just around the corner, so now is a perfect time to check out Trick or Treat at Caynham Castle, a collection of four Halloween-themed novellas, all of which take place in and around the ancient but restored Caynham Castle located in western England.  These four spooky, witchy, spirit-filled stories are set against the stunning background of Caynham Castle’s epic Halloween Ball and Bonfire Night!

Even though Trick or Treat at Caynham Castle is set in England, the collection has significant Charlotte connections since two of the four contributors call Charlotte home.  These Charlotte writers are Nancy Northcott, whose contribution is titled Mr. Never Again, and Morgan Brice, whose contribution is titled Secrets and Ciphers.

Nancy’s story is tied to her Arachnid Files romantic suspense series.  I asked her for more information about Mr. Never Again. Here is what she sent to me:

Mr. Never Again, my contribution to Trick or Treat at Caynham Castle, offers its hero and heroine a second chance at love. They’re spies guarding a weapons designer, so the story includes intrigue and action-adventure. I really do love a good battle scene. And, of course, a happy ending.

Because the Caynham Castle series is set in England, our Halloween theme offered me a chance to incorporate a holiday we don’t have here in the U.S., Guy Fawkes Day (though it’s more commonly called Bonfire Night or Fireworks Night now). It commemorates Guy Fawkes’s failure to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. The November 5 holiday culminates in Bonfire Night when people stand around bonfires while eating Parkin cakes (made of oatmeal, flour, ginger, and molasses) and drinking beverages of choice. I really think we should import this holiday because it sounds like great fun!

All the stories in this anthology and its siblings are set in and around Caynham Castle, an ancient castle that’s now a modern boutique hotel. It’s near the Welsh Border and has a small village, Caynham-on-Ledwyche, and an Iron Age hillfort nearby. The collaboration has been fun for us, and we hope it will be for readers.

Morgan Brice (a pen name used by fantasy writer Gail Z. Martin) provides a story that combines mystery and M/M romance.  I contacted her and asked for more information about Secrets and Ciphers.  Here is what she sent to me: 

Lovers from Cape May, New Jersey, take a Halloween holiday at the magnificent Caynham Castle in Secrets and Ciphers. Erik Mitchell and Ben Nolan both left dangerous careers for a chance to start over. Erik parlayed his expertise as a former art fraud investigator into owning an antique shop in Cape May. Ben left the Newark Police Department disillusioned over corruption, and took over the family rental real estate business. When they met, sparks flew between them—and they teamed up personally and professionally to solve a series of cold case murders and disappearances of 1950s Mobsters that spilled over into modern-day mayhem. 

They celebrate surviving their case—and falling in love—by taking a trip to Caynham Castle. Together they uncover a 700-year-old mystery, a family secret, a historical treasure, and the angry ghost of a Knights Templar guardian. (M/M Paranormal Romance by Morgan Brice with ties to her Treasure Trail series.)

The other contributors to Trick or Treat at Caynham Castle are North Carolina author Caren Crane and North Carolina native Jeanne Adams.  In Caren Crane’s tale, Murky Waters, a landscape architect from Massachusetts finds much more than he expects, both in a floral designer from his friend’s shop and in the woods south of Caynham Castle.  In Jeanne Adams’s Trouble Under the Tower, an archaeologist witch from Idaho gets involved with a sexy photographer from the witchiest town in America, Haven Harbor, Massachusetts.  In the process, they discover a hidden chapel, fend off thieves, and help put a dark entity to rest.

Trick or Treat at Caynham Castle is one of three holiday-themed collections that take place in Caynham Castle.  The others are Christmas at Caynham Castle and Ring in the New Year at Caynham Castle.  Plans are in the works for a Valentine’s Day collection and a Midsummer’s Day collection.  Like Trick or Treat at Caynham Castle, these other collections have Storied Charlotte connections, and all have stories filled with adventure, romance, and castle intrigue.    

It’s no secret that Mark de Castrique is one of Charlotte’s leading mystery writers.  A native of Hendersonville, North Carolina, Mark is the author of two popular mystery series in which he makes use of his familiarity with western North Carolina—the Barry Clayton Series and the Sam Blackman Series.  He has also written several standalone mysteries, including The 13^th Target and The Singularity Race, both of which are set in Washington, DC.  At first glance, it might seem a bit mysterious that a Charlotte writer would use Washington, DC, as a setting.  However, earlier in his career, Mark worked as a broadcast and film producer in Washington, DC, so he knows his way around our nation’s capital. 

Mark draws on his knowledge of the Washington, DC, area in his latest mystery, Secret Lives, which Poison Pen Press will release on October 11, 2022.  Secret Lives is the first book in Mark’s new Ethel Fiona Crestwater Series.  The central character in Secret Lives is a 75-year-old retired FBI agent who runs a boardinghouse.  For readers who want to know more about Secret Lives and Mark’s other mysteries, please click on the following link:  http://www.markdecastrique.com/

I recently contacted Mark and asked him how he came up with the character of Ethel Fiona Crestwater.  Here is what he sent to me:

A few months before Covid struck, I was flying back to Charlotte from Phoenix.  It was a long flight, and at one point I had a brief conversation with the young woman seated beside me.  I asked her if she also lived in Charlotte.  She said she was only connecting to a flight for Washington, DC.  Since I have two daughters in the DC area, I asked if that was her home.  She replied she was going to visit a great aunt who lived in the District.  Then she added, “She’s eighty-five-years old and lives in the house she was born in.” 

“Does any family live with her?” I asked. 

“No,” the woman replied.  “No family, but we don’t worry about her.  She rents out rooms to FBI and Secret Service agents.  There’s always someone in the house with a gun.”

There’s always someone in the house with a gun.  Music to a mystery writer’s ears.  My co-traveler had given me the outline of what could be an interesting character.  But what to do with her?

An older friend in Charlotte had told me that as a 14-year-old high school student in DC, she would ride the bus to the FBI after school where she would classify and categorize fingerprints using cards and a magnifying glass.  This was before computers.  Her experience inspired me to make my character more than a landlady for agents; she would be one herself.  She became a retired FBI agent who had spent her life in the Bureau and whose former borders included the heads of the FBI and Secret Service.

Her name is Ethel Fiona Crestwater, and she is a force to be reckoned with.  I imagine her as Ruth Bader Ginsburg as an FBI agent.  Feisty, brilliant, and protective of those she holds dear.  So, when one of her boarders is murdered in front of her house, there’s no stopping her pursuit of justice.

Thanks to a Charlotte connection and a chance encounter on a plane, Ethel debuts in Secret Lives on October 11th.

Secret Lives is not yet officially released, but it is already getting very strong reviews.  The reviewer from Publishers Weekly praises the central character as “an elderly Nancy Drew: sure of herself and her convictions, and ready to bend a few rules to achieve her goal of seeing justice done.  She’s off to a fine start.”  The reviewer from Kirkus Reviews describes the book as “a taut and crisply told thriller whose charmingly shady protagonist triumphs.”

Mark will be signing copies Secret Lives and talking about Ethel Fiona Crestwater at Park Road Books on Tuesday, October 18, 2022, at 7:00 pm.  I plan to be there.  Ethel Fiona Crestwater might be from the DC area, but I consider her an honorary member of Storied Charlotte.    

The American Library Association has been organizing its annual Banned Books Week since 1982. This year’s Banned Books Week will be held September 18-24.  One of the ways in which the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library is participating in this national event is by sponsoring a panel presentation focusing on the freedom to read.  This panel presentation will take place on Wednesday, September 21, 2022, at 6:00 p.m. at ImaginOn: The Joe and Joan Martin Center.  

One of the organizers of this panel presentation is Becca Worthington, the head Children’s Librarian at ImaginOn.  I contacted Becca and asked her for more information about this panel discussion.  Here is what she sent to me:

Every year, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library is thrilled to celebrate Freedom to Read Week during National Banned Books Week (September 18-24), and we are always excited to have a forum to safely discuss the dangers of censorship and what we can do to support and protect the freedom of information. This year, however, we’re kicking it up a notch. 

Attempts to ban books from schools and public libraries are rising at an unprecedented level across the country. In fact, as of September 16, the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom (ALA’s OIF, the official organization for tracking book bans and challenges across the United States) reported 681 documented attempts to either ban or restrict library resources in school, university, or public libraries so far in 2022, which is on pace to break records as the highest number of challenges in a single year since the OIF began recording statistics twenty years ago. That’s not good. In fact, it’s terrifying.

As high-profile censorship challenges continue with worrying frequency, it is important to acknowledge that censorship in a variety of forms is also happening here in Charlotte and the surrounding areas. We decided to put together a panel discussion on the topic and open it up to the public. 

The event, “From Censorship and Silence to Celebration: A Freedom to Read Panel,” will take place on Wednesday, September 21st from 6:00-7:00pm in the Wells Fargo Playhouse at ImaginOn: The Joe & Joan Martin Center. It will be moderated by Charlotte Mecklenburg Library’s CEO, Marcellus “MT” Turner, and panelists will include Jessica Reid, Media Coordinator at Eastover Elementary who has dealt with book challenges at her school library; Bridget Thomas, founder of the QC Banned Books Club with over 200 members; Dr. Mark West, professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where he has been teaching courses on children’s and young adult literature since 1984 and who has written two books on censorship; and Alicia D. Williams, author of Genesis Begins Again, which received the Newbery and Kirkus Prize honors, was a William C. Morris prize finalist, and won the Coretta Scott King–John Steptoe Award for New Talent. 

We would love for anyone interested in learning more about the dangers of book banning and censorship and the importance of free expression and first amendment rights to consider attending. And if you’re curious and would like to know about promoting and supporting the freedom to read, please visit https://uniteagainstbookbans.org/

As one of the panelists who will be participating in “From Censorship and Silence to Celebration: A Freedom to Read Panel,” I urge everyone in Storied Charlotte to join the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library in celebrating and exercising our precious freedom to read.

For many Charlotte authors, their decision to pursue a writing career comes after working for years in another career.  My friend Landis Wade, for example, pursued a career as a trial lawyer before he penned Deadly Declarations: An Indie Retirement Mystery.  For Charlotte writer Gary Edgington, his decision to try his hand at writing a novel came after pursuing a forty-year career as a law enforcement and counterterrorism specialist. During his career, he served as an embedded advisor during America’s involvement in the Iraq War.  Gary draws extensively on his experiences in Iraq in his debut thriller novel titled Outside the Wire, which Köehlerbooks recently released.

The novel opens in Baghdad in 2008, and it immediately immerses the reader in the chaos and complexities of the war.   The novel is marketed as a military thriller, but it is also a story about a burgeoning relationship between a counterterrorism expert named Rick Sutherland and a military physician named Nancy Weaver.   For more information about Gary and his debut novel, please click on the following link:  https://garyedgingtonauthor.com/

When I learned about the publication of Outside the Wire, I reached out to Gary and asked him how he came to write this novel.  Here is what he sent to me:

Outside the Wire actually started life as The Baghdad Diet. Since my tour in Iraq helped me shed 25 pounds, I thought it would be amusing to poke fun at the latest trendy diets while exploring the realities of wartime deployment. This bit of sardonic humor was meant to warn the reader they were not picking up your average blood and guts war novel. I thought it was great – my agent – not so much.

The inspiration for this book came to me one stifling, dust-choked afternoon as I was walking back from dinner. I had just learned that yet another young soldier had taken his life on base. That, coupled with a recent attempted murder at another camp, got me thinking. What if a retired detective like me was brought in to assist on an Agatha-Christie-like murder investigation? When I returned stateside, I started roughing out an idea for a novel. However, my Agatha-Christie project quickly morphed into a “fate of the world hanging in the balance” military/detective thriller. The story is voiced by a quick-witted retired LAPD Lieutenant. Working entirely out of his element, it doesn’t help that he is constantly hindered by Army red tape, that is not only mystifying but downright scary.

Cops and soldiers share many similar traits, but their missions and methodologies could not be more different. In 2008, the military’s role was pacification and counter-insurgency operations which had to be done while working within the Iraqi Judicial system. That meant GIs now had to write detailed reports, collect evidence and conduct formal interviews. The US Army excels at many things, but Police 101 is not one of them. Part of my job was to share my thirty years of law enforcement experience with the Army and help them identify, track down and eliminate terrorist cells.

I started Outside the Wire while I was living in California, but I finished it after I moved to Charlotte. I’m a history guy and have always loved exploring this region. Many of my Scots-Irish ancestors settled in the Piedmont and Blue Ridge area, so I feel a deep connection to this place. My daughter, a teacher, and her husband, a surgical tech, were the first to move to Charlotte. So naturally, we made a few visits and soon realized this was an exceptional area. We moved here in 2020, and our little tribe was blessed with a grandson late last year. In our mind, Charlotte is a perfect blend of sophistication and southern hospitality, topped by a natural beauty that is second to none.

I congratulate Gary on the publication of his debut novel, and I welcome him to Storied Charlotte’s community of writers. 

When I met Dr. Bertha Maxwell-Roddey in 1985, she was already a living legend in Charlotte’s educational circles.  Even before I met her, I knew that she had started UNC Charlotte’s Black Studies Program (which eventually evolved into the current Africana Studies Department), and I had heard that she had an illustrious career as a teacher and principal in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School System before joining UNC Charlotte’s College of Education in 1970.  Since that initial meeting with her, I have taken an interest in her life and career, so I was pleased when I learned that the University Press of Florida recently published Dr. Sonya Y. Ramsey’s Bertha Maxwell-Roddey:  A Modern-Day Race Woman and the Power of Black Leadership.  For more information about this book, please click on the following link:  https://upf.com/book.asp?id=9780813069326

Sonya is a Full Professor in the History Department at UNC Charlotte.  She also serves as the current Director of UNC Charlotte’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program.  She has a long-standing interest in the history of education, and she wrote on this topic in her first book, which is titled Reading, Writing, and Segregation:  A Century of Black Women Teachers in Nashville. Since her first book is about the schools in her hometown of Nashville, I wondered why she decided to write a biography of a Charlotte educator.  I contacted Sonya and asked her for more information about how she became interested in writing a book about Bertha Maxwell-Roddey.  Here is what she sent to me:

After relocating from Texas in 2007 and completing my first year teaching history at UNC Charlotte, I finally finished my first book on the history of African American teachers in Nashville. Now, I had to find a new research project. In the fall of 2008, I attended Africana Studies Program’s first annual Dr. Bertha Maxwell-Roddey Distinguished Africana Lecture. That night would shape the next few years of my life. I knew that Dr. Maxwell-Roddey founded UNC Charlotte’s then Black Studies Program, but her name seemed so familiar in some other context, but I couldn’t figure out why. As soon as she walked in, I remembered. 

When they announced her name, UNC Charlotte’s Delta Sigma Theta Sorority’s Inc. Iota Rho Chapter quickly stood up to attention.  Disclaimer here: I am also a Delta Sigma Theta Sorority member, but I have not participated in sorority activities for years. I felt so embarrassed because Delta Sigma Theta and the other African American national sororities are public service organizations. Participation begins in college and continues after graduation for the rest of your life. After getting over my feelings of guilt, I started to learn more about this woman who was the 20^th National President of Delta Sigma Theta.

I realized that this local educational activist was a forerunner in Charlotte’s school desegregation struggle as one of the first Black women principals of a white elementary school in Charlotte in 1968, was the founding director of UNC Charlotte’s Africana Studies Department and co-founded the Afro American Cultural and Service Center in the early 1970s, which became the Harvey B. Gantt Center for the Arts + Culture. Nationally, she founded the National Council for Black Studies in 1974 and led Delta as its 20^th National President from 1992 to 1996. She even grew up in Seneca, SC, only a few miles from where my mother grew up, and I spent my summers with my grandmother. I soon had no doubt that I had found the subject for my next research project.

Unlike novelists, whom I imagine have burning passions for writing that cannot be quenched, I have mixed feelings about writing.  While I do love to research and write, I often find it a pressure-filled undertaking that I most enjoy after it’s done. As a former journalism major in college, I loved to learn about people’s lives, but after working as the entertainment editor of The Hilltop, Howard University’s college newspaper, and completing several college newspaper internships, I realized that I had no interest in interviewing arrogant minor celebrities or rushing towards a potentially dangerous event to be first on the scene. So, I soon returned to my first love, the pursuit of history. I managed to get accepted into UNC Chapel Hill’s history program with fellowships, where I began a journey of historical discovery that would bring a newness to the familiarity of local history and attention to the lesser understood experiences of African American women teachers.

Several years have passed since I first decided to write a biography of Dr. Bertha Maxwell-Roddey. As a scholar of recent history, I have the extraordinary opportunity to conduct oral history interviews. Nevertheless, this research process was both rewarding and frustrating as I felt that I had to become a detective because so many well-minded declutterers had tossed or destroyed historical records. Even though UNC Charlotte’s Atkins Library Special Collections housed several valuable archival collections, much of the documentary evidence for this book remained in the personal historical collections that lay in weathered boxes in people’s basements, garages, and attics.

Despite these travails, I cherished visiting with Dr. Maxwell-Roddey as she shared her life story with me. As a charismatic and brilliant woman with wit and humor, she had the uncanny ability to make people do service or work on projects far beyond their job descriptions. Bertha Maxwell-Roddey enthusiastically empathized that she did not think she left a legacy, but it was clearly visible when you visited the Gantt Center, sat with her former students from the 1970s during their weekly visits, or observed her sorority sisters who helped to prepare her to attend many of the events that she is still invited to attend.

My new book, Bertha Maxwell-Roddey: A Modern-Day Race Woman and the Power of Black Leadership, the story of the life and vision as an educational activist is not just a biography of a phenomenal woman. It represents the untold story of Black women and others who fought to turn the promises and achievements of the civil rights and feminist movements into tangible realities as they fought to make desegregation work in the quiet aftermath of the public civil rights marches and the fiery speeches of Black Power activists in the board rooms and classrooms of the desegregated south from the 1970s to the 1990s.

I congratulate Sonya on the publication of her biography of Bertha Maxwell-Roddey. By researching and writing this book, she has succeeded in telling the true and inspiring story behind one of the most famous names in the history of Storied Charlotte’s educational institutions.

I am a regular reader of the comic strip Zits, which made its debut exactly twenty-five years ago this summer.  Written by Jerry Scott and illustrated by Jim Borgman, Zits focuses on the experiences of Jeremy Duncan, a seventeen-year-old high school student.   One of the aspects of this comic strip that intrigues me is how Jeremy relives his junior year in high school over and over again.  Right around this time of the year, Jeremy finishes his summer job and then finds himself right back at the beginning of his junior year.  Part of me wants to tell Jeremy to drop all of his AP courses since he is never going to make it to college.  However, another part of me wants to tell him to make the most of this latest version of his junior year, for with each new school year comes a new set of stories.  A new collection of Zits comic strips is scheduled to be released in September under the title of Binge-Worthy Zits For readers who want to know more about Zits, please click on the following link:  https://comicskingdom.com/zits/about

As an English professor at the start of my thirty-ninth year at UNC Charlotte, I can relate to Jeremy’s situation.  In the beginning of every fall semester, I have a sense that the grand tempo of my life is about to start all over again.  For me at least, there is something reassuring about having the opportunity to come up with new variations on a familiar theme.  Although the story of each school year has a similar overarching plot, the characters change, the details of the setting change, and in some ways my viewpoint changes.  Such variations are what keep me reading Zits, and such variations are what cause me to look forward to the start of each new school year.

I recently had a conversation with Scott Gartlan, the Executive Director of the Charlotte Teachers Institute (CTI), about how the start of the new school year shapes the lives of teachers here in Charlotte.  I enjoyed hearing Scott’s thoughts on this topic, so I asked him if he would share his insights with the readers of my Storied Charlotte blog.  Here is what he sent to me:

A song that really resonates with me this time of year is called “September Again” by Brooklyn-based, synth-pop band Nation of Language.   The lyrics set the stage for a remembrance of things passed – “So you go back to church to reclaim the feeling, you say you don’t understand why” – and then leads to a somewhat underwhelming take on the passing of time – “And it’s September again, flipping through the same old books.”  These rockers are questioning what it means that time passes and yet we return to places and experiences we’ve known for many years, maybe forever.  These thoughts bounce around my head as I listen to this song sitting at my desk in August.  I wonder how I can find that thing we once had but can’t always locate in our daily lives.  When I listen to this song, I think of teachers and their students as they prepare for another year of hugs and tears, and hard work and triumph, all within the walls of their classrooms in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS).  I think the thing we all want to reclaim is that feeling of hope.  Teachers give me hope.  They give us that hope. 

I direct the Charlotte Teachers Institute, something I’ve done for going on twelve years now.  In my role, I get to interact and support professors at UNC Charlotte and Johnson C. Smith University as they develop and lead seminars for P-12 CMS teachers.  These seminars tap into the content expertise and research of these professors while creating a safe space to discover connections in all kinds of classrooms, from those that teach the littlest four-year-old children in Pre-Kindergarten to the collegebound eighteen-year-olds.  Over the years I’ve had the privilege to support 100 seminars led by more than 75 professors at UNC Charlotte, Davidson College, and Johnson C. Smith University. 

Looking back, I ask myself:  What keeps me coming back each year?  My answer is the hope and love I see in the teachers each year as they begin a new school year.  As one teacher said to me the other day about getting ready for school, “It’s a reset.”  I thought of how much hope and optimism there is in that idea of resetting, starting anew.  For this teacher, and many I know, this time of year is not about the “same old books” as a dry and boring thing, but rather a fresh start, a way to make a new path by growing and learning.  Teachers are doing the same old things like setting up their classrooms, putting the finishing touches on their syllabi, and making sure everything is ready to go when school starts.  But the same old thing is not the same old thing for teachers.  I see them reclaim a hope for something simple and new – a student writing their name at the top of their paper, or successfully solving that tricky math problem.  To me that represents seeing the best in people and with that brings an energizing and dynamic view of the world. 

It’s a common thing to be overwhelmed and anxious when September rolls around.  But I say:  Look to the teacher for hope.  Rather than bemoan the return of school when I listen to “September Again,” I am filled with the hope of a new beginning and the love that teachers give their students each day.   So that is the challenge:  see the world through the eyes of a teacher to find hope, love, and optimism. 

For readers who want to know more about the Charlotte Teachers Institute, please click on the following link:  https://charlotteteachers.org/  I know that the calendar says that January 1 rings in the New Year, but to me, it doesn’t ring true.  To quote a line from a famous U2 song, “Nothing changes on New Year’s Day.”  I think for all of us whose lives are touched by educational institutions, the real new year starts at the end of the summer when the schools reopen.  I wish everyone in Storied Charlotte (including Jeremy who appears daily in the Charlotte Observer) a happy new school year full of new stories.