Camellias, severed legs, and sweet tea!

Hello, Everyone! Summer is coming to an end, but why not prolong the essence of heat, humidity, mosquitoes, and sweet iced tea with some Southern literature? Here are a few reads I've gathered up...

Conveniently, Deep South Magazine has published a list of "End of Summer Reads," including The Last Camellia by Sarah Jio. In this loosely-Southern novel, the characters search for the last surviving specimen of a Charleston camellia, along the way stumbling upon long-hidden crimes!

The excellent book review site Cannonball Read 5 features a review of Nowhere But Home by Liza Palmer, a snappy Southern romance-esque novel with a twist -- the main character Queenie is a chef who ends up making the last meals for death row inmates!

North Carolina author Lisa Logan recently released Of The People, a collection of inspiringly eclectic short stories, featuring "nuns, Vietnam War veterans, car thieves, insanely jealous husbands, and a sweet old aunt who keeps her severed leg in the deep freezer." I've read this one, and it's great -- darkly humorous and poignant, reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor's gothic style.

And, finally, if you haven't already read Mindy Friddle, you should check out her latest novel Secret Keepers, which won the 2009 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. Her protagonist is 72-year-old Emma, stuck handling the problems of her grown children in her South Carolina hometown. Botanicals and family secrets intertine in this serious-but-comical Southern novel.

And now for something completely different...

Just had to mention a visit I took last week to the lovely Niche Gardens, outside Chapel Hill, NC. It's a lovely place, tucked away like a hidden forest, with metal sculptures and wandering cats! They specialize in native plants, as opposed to invasive ones, and have extended weekend hours in the fall.

 

Painted mailboxes at Niche Gardens!

 

Means "Pot full of flowers" according to my husband!

New novel explores Scottish--NC connection!!

I've very excited to announce that my new novel Rest and Be Thankful has just been released on Amazon by Pilrig Press!! The new press is based in Edinburgh, my hometown, and is quickly becoming a major player in the U.K. publishing industry!   

I started working on the novel around 2006, after a trip to Scotland with my mother. We'd rented a car with my aunt (nothing like the aunt in the novel, by the way!!) and had driven from Edinburgh to Ullapool, along the way getting a flat tyre and having to detour to Inverness airport where the rental company refused to pay for us to get a new tire, even though we had insurance! But it was still a great trip, especially since I had never been that far north before -- we drove past  Bridge of Orchy, and Loch Ness and all the places mentioned in the novel (except the fictional village where they meet a Norman Bates-type character!). I took notes on some scraps of paper I'd found in my backpack, and when we got back to NC, I kind of just let it all sink in.

My friend Catherine introduced me to the novels of Elizabeth Jane Howard, and I got wrapped up in the diary-type style of The Light Years. I began writing a rough draft of a novel set in Scotland, using a similar style -- the diary entries of Katy, an American 13-year-old girl who travels from North Carolina to Scotland to try to reconnect with her estranged Scottish mother. Then I added the point of view of a wacky aunt with man trouble! Over the years, I added the mother's point of view, but eventually I took it all out, except for Katy's voice, and made the story hers alone. After all, that's where it started, with Katy, and her wish to be closer to her mother. Along the way, some very nasty stuff happens... But you'll have to read the novel to find out more!!