Favorite Spots

Hi everyone! Thanks for the comments about your favorite NC locations. We love to hear what you think! Our commenters said that their favorite places were Asheville and the Sandhills region. Here we’ll give you all some more information about authors and books in these areas.

For the Sandhills region we found that author Roberta Isleib stumbled upon the town of Pinehurst when she headed down to North Carolina for a work conference. After exploring the town a bit, she decided to set one of the books in her golf lovers’ mystery series here. The book, Fairway to Heaven, follows Cassie Burdette as she plays in a golf tournament on the same team as her estranged father and on-again off-again boyfriend, while holding down maid of honor duties for her best friend. Then the bride’s father disappears. What’s a girl to do?! Investigate of course….
(www.robertaisleib.com/golf/pinehurst.htm)

Did you know?

• Pinehurst was on the list of names for what we now call Martha's Vineyard.
• The landscape architect who was in charge of the design of Pinehurst also designed Central Park in New York City.
• Pinehurst is home to Maniac Hill which was the first driving range in the US.

For more history about Pinehurst check out www.pinehurst.com.

For all you Asheville and mountains lovers out there, we have many well-known authors associated with this town as well as numerous books set in this location. Some well-known authors are Sarah Addison Allen, Mark de Castrique, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Frazier, and Thomas Wolfe to name a few. Throughout our research we have found that many authors find their way to our lovely North Carolina mountains in their writing career to be inspired by the beautiful vistas of the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Check out the view below and you'll see why!

Photo from Apple Wood Manor.

A Note from Bookmarks...



Our poster at Bookmarks!

So this weekend we kicked off our journey toward our official launch of the NC Lit Map by attending the BookMarks festival in Winston-Salem this past Saturday. We debuted our new poster (loving the new map!) as well as frisbees and bookmarks (of course!) detailing how to find us on the Web. Here are some interesting tidbits from the festival...

Kathelene and I made the trek to 7th and Trade Street to unload all of the Lit Map materials from my car.  (I honestly didn't believe we would have soooo much stuff until I had started gathering it together the day before.)  I was able to park right next to our table where we discovered we had a glamourous location directly in front of the port-o-potties.  Thank goodness we had such a pretty map to put up to block the view!  We set up our table with all the Lit Map swag and waited for the crowds.

The frisbees

And they came!  We met tons of people who were excited to hear about the Lit Map: parents with children, school and public librarians, teachers, and readers of all ages.  The frisbees really brought the children to our table.  One small boy took a look at the logo on the frisbee and said "Is that a compass rose?"  I was pleased to report that he had gotten it right.  And pleased that the chosen design elements had successfully connected with our audience.  Yay Lit Map!!

And thanks to the Book Diva for the shout-out in your blog.  It was a great festival!