A couple weeks ago I received an email from Yahoo Upcoming Events announcing a Book Your Lunch event with authors Karen White and Wendy Wax. Having never heard of Book Your Lunch, I really didn't know what to expect but a few things caught my attention. First, the event was being sponsored by Fiction Addiction, a local independent bookstore and I always do my best to support local businesses. Second, Karen White and Wendy Wax are two favorite authors who write southern womens fiction and womens fiction set in the south (yes, there is a difference) respectively, and having met them at a previous Georgia Romance Writers conference in Atlanta, I knew they would be entertaining. Finally, the event was being held at The Lazy Goat, a terrific Mediterranean cuisine restaurant I'd heard about so I knew we'd be well fed. (I have my priorities!) Favorite authors, fellow readers, terrific food and a chance to support a local indy bookstore? Total win! I bought my ticket and two days ago attended my first, but surely not my last, Book Your Lunch event.
Jill, Wendy & Karen
They warned me my GPS wouldn't find the restaurant and they were right but I knew the general area and eventually got to the right place. After circling the parking garage a few times I found an open parking spot then set out to find the right exit to the restaurant. I had only gone a few steps when I encountered a friendly woman who looked like she knew where she was going. Turns out she's a fellow blogger by the name of Kathy Roberts who runs a site called Bermuda Onion's Weblog and she's a regular at these events. The next person I met was Jill Hendrix, the owner of Fiction Addiction. If you're in the Upstate of South Carolina, drop by this great indy bookstore and say hello and don't forget to check out upcoming events at their website.
Jill is a wonderful hostess, immediately putting her guests at ease. I was delighted to discover that I had been seated at a table with Wendy Wax and looked forward to chatting with her over lunch but first, we all settled in to listen to Karen and Wendy talk about the ins and outs of writing, being critique partners and their separate journeys to their current releases: The Beach Trees by Karen and Ten BeachRoad by Wendy.
Table-Mates Mary Alice and Evonne
Karen writes an average of two books per year and has published fourteen books over the past ten years. She describes her writing as the kind that "makes you laugh, cry and not want to stick your head in an oven." In other words, she'd never be an Oprah pick. She always writes about the south because that's what she knows and loves. She especially likes the Lowcountry of South Carolina and has used that area as the setting for several of her books. One of the things Karen is known for is the relationships between women, especially sisters, in her books. While Karen has only brothers, her mother has sisters and as a child, one of Karen's favorite things to do was sit quietly under the kitchen table and listen to her mother and aunts talk. Those memories became the inspiration for the "southern voices" and sister relationships in her books today.
Karen's 2010 release, On Folly Beach spent five weeks on the NYT Bestseller List and is a finalist for this year's RITA for Novel with Strong Romantic Elements and her newest release, The Beach Trees, debuted at #15 on the NYT Trade Paperback Bestseller List. It's apparent that many new readers are discovering the wonders of this very talented author. Click here to read Janga's 5 Star review of The Beach Trees, posted yesterday at The Romance Dish and watch the video below to hear Karen talk about the inspiration for the story.
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A journalism major, Wendy Wax worked in television and radio, including hosting a radio show called "Desperate and Dateless," before turning her talents to writing novels. She started out writing romantic comedy, publishing books with appropriately amusing titles such as her all-time favorite, Leave it to Cleavage. A couple years ago, changes at her publishing house caused Wendy to change agents, publishers and the direction of her writing. She switched from romantic comedy to women's fiction and never looked back. Her first womens fiction novel, The Accidental Bestseller, a 2010 RITA finalist, is one of my favorites. Her current release, Ten Beach Road once again explores relationships among women and the journey they embark upon. Here's the story blurb:
Madeline, Avery, and Nikki are strangers to each other, but they have one thing in common. They each wake up one morning to discover their life savings have vanished, along with their trusted financial manager- leaving them with nothing but co-ownership of a ramshackle beachfront house.
Throwing their lots in together, they take on the challenge of restoring the historic property. But just as they begin to reinvent themselves and discover the power of friendship, secrets threaten to tear down their trust-and destroy their lives a second time.
During the writing of Ten Beach Road, Wendy, who says no one in her family is allowed to own tools...for their own safety and the safety of others...became addicted to HGTV's home improvement shows and made a video about it on Youtube. Click below to check it out.
I hope you all enjoyed this peek into my first author lunch adventure. I had a wonderful time and am already looking forward to my next one and, after hearing Karen and Wendy speak, I'm more excited than ever about reading their new books!
Have you ever attended an author lunch or an author talk? Do you have events like these where you live? What author or authors would entice you to attend one? Have you attended any of the livestreaming author talks that have been on the internet recently?
We have two books to give away today to two random visitors thanks to the generosity of Heidi Richter at Penguin, Karen White and Wendy Wax. Just leave a comment to be eligible to win a signed copy of The Beach Trees or a signed copy of Ten Beach Road. (U.S. / Canadian addresses only)
The Beach Trees By Karen White Publisher: NAL Trade Release Date: May 3, 2011
Karen White calls her fiction “grit lit,” women’s fiction with a strong Southern accent, but in the case of her latest release, The Beach Trees, “grit lit” may serve as well to describe the fortitude of her characters, major and secondary, who prove themselves survivors in the face of profound loss. Sense of place is high on the list of qualities that define Southern fiction generally, and it’s high on the list of things that White does exceedingly well. Her descriptions of New Orleans and Biloxi are so richly evocative that the reader can almost feel the steamy heat, smell the water, and see the scars left by hurricanes and an oil spill. But place is more than mere setting in this novel; it is also a character, as tenacious and resilient as the people who call this region home.
Another convention of Southern literature is an awareness of the past and its intrusion on the present. White shows this intrusion with all her characters, native Southerner and outsider alike. Julie Holt’s life is shaped by an event in her past. Seventeen years ago, her younger sister, Chelsea, disappeared on the watch of twelve-year-old Julie, who watched her family splinter as her mother devoted her life to finding Chelsea. Since her mother’s death ten years ago, Julie has been consumed with doing what her mother could not do. But it is not her own past that brings her to Biloxi; it is rather the past of her friend Monica Guidry, dead of congenital heart defect at 28. Monica, who was estranged from her family, leaves Julie a beach house in Biloxi and the guardianship of Beau, Monica’s five-year-old son. When caring for Beau causes Julie to lose her job at a New York auction house, she sees the house in Biloxi as her only option.
The beach house provides no sanctuary, however; it was destroyed by Katrina. Julie’s resources are thin when a mysterious painting leads her to Monica’s grandmother, Aimee, and brother, Trey. Aimee persuades Julie to stay at the family home to give Beau a chance to know his mother’s family and encourages Julie and the reluctant Trey to rebuild River Song, the beach house. Julie, believing that Beau needs his family and intrigued by the painting that links her family to the Guidrys, agrees. The painting, the work of Julie’s great-grandfather, is a portrait of Caroline Guidry, Trey’s great-grandmother, another Guidry woman who disappeared.
From this point on, White seamlessly weaves together narratives of past and present. Aimee shares her story with Julie, bringing to life the beautiful, unconventional Caroline, her controlling husband, and their two sons, both of whom Aimee loved. As they work together to rebuild River Song, Julie’s adversarial relationship with Trey gradually transforms to a partnership, a friendship, and eventually something more. Secrets long buried are revealed, and questions about Monica’s disappearance, as well as Caroline’s, are answered.
Karen White has been an autobuy author for me since I read The Memory of Water in 2008 and immediately tracked down her backlist. I love her layered characters with their tangled relationships, her evocation of a region I know by heart, her lucid prose with its lyrical passages, and the Southern Gothic touches that flavor but do not define her books. The Beach Trees contains all of these things and more. It is the story of a woman’s journey from shadow to substance, from rootless seeker to one grounded in her place, from a woman owned by the past to one eagerly anticipating the future. It is also a love story—love for a child, a man, and a home. But The Beach Trees is not only Julie’s story. It is also the story of family and place, the story of survivors. Early in the novel, Julie asks Aimee why people rebuild after a hurricane rather than leaving. Aimee responds:
“Because this is home.” She waited to see if the words registered with me, but I just looked back at her, not understanding at all.
After a deep breath, she looked up at a tall oak tree beyond the garden, its leaves still green against the early October sky, the limbs now thick with foliage. “Because the water recedes, and the sun comes out, and the trees grow back. Because” — she spread her hands, indicated the garden and the tree and, I imagined, the entire peninsula of Biloxi — “because we’ve learned that great tragedy gives us opportunities for great kindness. It’s like a needed reminder that the human spirit is alive and well despite all evidence to the contrary.” She lowered her hands to her sides. “I figured I wasn’t dead, so I must not be done.”
