Charlotte Readers Podcast February 25, 2020

Take a listen to Mary Flinn and Mary Ann Claud as they talk with Landis Wade of Charlotte Readers Podcast. LUMINA and Alex Dances are both books set in North Carolina and both have themes about dancing.

S5-08 Mary Ann Claud and Mary Flinn – “Alex Dances” and “Lumina”

https://content.blubrry.com/charlottereaderspodcast/Claud_and_Flinn_episode.mp3

The Lady on the Plane

After a full decade now of writing as a self-published author with nine novels to my credit, I am still undaunted in my quest to have my work read, whether as a best-selling author as I’d once hoped, or one who merely has a regional following. My old, red-hot dreams of supporting myself through my writing have faded to glowing embers, but I always find so much gratification in connecting personally with readers. Something larger than both the reader and the writer emerges as we come to know each other through the written word. We recognize a shared passion on the pages. For me, I can liken the experience to a runner’s high, or that sense of euphoria a musician or an actor experiences at the height of a performance. It is sensational. My readers tell me they love my work, which encourages me to keep writing and that exclamation, “I can’t wait for your next book!” inspires me to continue. I knew going into the writing vocation that authors I admire like J. K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame, Twilight series author Stephanie Myer, Catherine Stockett (The Help), and Jan Karon, author of the Mitford series, all had trouble finding an agent, so I knew to expect disappointment. Some of those authors claim it took over 60 tries to get noticed. I wasn’t particularly devastated when my own efforts didn’t result in an agent contract. Although I would like to sell more books, self-publishing hasn’t been a bad gig. If self-publishing was good enough for Benjamin Franklin, then I knew I should follow suit. But in the back of my mind I always think: I am only one person away from busting this thing wide open!

Last summer, on a Denver-bound plane to visit my daughter, the lady sitting next to me eventually asked what I was doing in my retirement. I told her I was an author, we talked about my books and my publishing journey. Also retired, this lady had been a high-powered executive in a marketing firm. As an avid reader, she seemed impressed with my determination and the gumption it must have taken me to learn how to go about self-publishing, but she wondered why I hadn’t hired an agent. I explained that I hadn’t found one and that each time I wrote a book, I researched prospective agents for my particular work and then sent out about 25 queries. Her reply was simple: “You didn’t send out enough. In business you have to follow a law-of-averages model to be successful. You have to send at least 100 queries. Of those, you’ll get about ten serious replies. Three or four will then drop out, three more will say they’re not interested and of the two remaining, one of them will take you on.” She then chuckled and said, “I really want to be your agent!” (Although I’d kind of wished she were serious, that never happened.)

The end of the story is—as always—to be continued. I believe a sequel is always possible in anything in life. With my next manuscript I’ll probably send out 100 queries to see where it leads. In the meantime, I still enjoy what I do, my positive reader feedback, and meeting nice people on airplanes who appreciate my craft. I have yet to sell enough books to be self-sufficient but fame and fortune were never my goals in the first place. An aura exists around the creation of something that comes from within and for me, that process is the prize.

Commemorative Christmas Ornament Features Lumina Pavilion

The Lumina Pavilion on Wrightsville Beach is now featured on this lovely collectible commemorative Christmas ornament. The Christmas 2019 ornament is the first of its kind, offered by the Wrightsville Beach Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to enhance recreational opportunities while helping preserve and improve the area's beautiful coastal environment. It also seeks to provide assistance within the county to educational and care-giving organizations in need, especially during times of natural disaster. This ornament, and those that will follow annually, will help raise funds to support the mission. By joining the Foundation and by gifting or collecting their annual ornament, you will put the "YOU" in their organization to help achieve their goals.

Christmas 2019 

This lovely ornament was sent to me by one of the organizers of the Wrightsville Beach Foundation. She found a copy of LUMINA that I'd left in her Little Free Library and decided I needed an ornament of my own! How fitting it is that the first ornament of its kind is of Lumina in the same year my LUMINA was published. I am so honored and touched by Jody Becker's kindness and recognition of my work. The universe has a wonderful way of connecting her beings!

You can order your own ornament at wrightsvillebeachfoundation.org.

Upcoming LUMINA Events

August 21- Wednesday at 7 pm - Park Road Books in Charlotte, NC

August 25 - Sunday from 6-9 pm - Lumina Daze at the Blockade Runner in Wrightsville Beach, NC

October 5 - Saturday - Ol' Front Porch Music Festival in Oriental, NC

October 19 - Saturday - Valle Country Fair, Valle Crucis, NC

November 2 - Saturday - Persimmon Festival, Colfax, NC

November 10 - Sunday from 11-4 MADE 4 the Holidays at the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, 501 Yanceyville St., Greensboro, NC 27405

December 7 - Saturday from 10-3 - Holiday Market sponsored by the St. Francis Day School, 3506 Lawndale Dr., Greensboro, NC 27408

December 8 - Sunday from 11-4 MADE 4 the Holidays at the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, 501 Yanceyville St., Greensboro, NC 27405

To order your autographed copies of LUMINA, or to request an author visit, please visit the website at www.TheOneNovel.com.

Looking for LUMINA?

You are invited to the LUMINA Book Launch!

Tuesday, April 2, 2019 at 5:30 pm

St. Francis Episcopal Church Parish Hall

3506 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro, NC 27408

Bring a friend, invite your book club!

Wear your shagging shoes!

RSVP to mflinn56@gmail.com by March 27, 2019

Here is a list of other signings and bookstores where LUMINA is sold:

April 5-7, 2019: The Azalea Festival Street Fair

Front Street, Wilmington, NC 

Friday from 6-10 pm, Saturday from 10 am - 6 pm, and Sunday, from 10 am-6 pm

Look for Mary Flinn's tent on Front Street near Cape Fear Community College

Saturday, April 13, 2019 at 3 pm - Book talk and signing at Sunrise Books

1101 N. Main St. Suite 202, High Point, NC 27262

Tuesday, April 16 at 7 pm - Book talk and signing at Barnes & Noble

3102 Northline Avenue, Friendly Center, Greensboro, NC 27408

Tuesday, May 7 at 7 pm - Book talk and signing at Scuppernong Books

304 S. Elm St., Greensboro, NC 27401

Saturday, May 18 at 2 pm - Book talk and signing at Barnes & Noble

6835 Conservation Way, Mayfaire Town Centre, Wilmington, NC 28405

Saturday, June 13 - Lumina Day at the Wrightsville Beach Museum of History

Explore Lumina "back in the day" spanning each decade from 1905 until 1973

Time TBA: games for kids, book talk, dance exhibitions, and refreshments at the newly restored 1924 Bordeaux Cottage on the museum site at 303 West Salisbury Street, Wilmington, NC 28480

LUMINA is proudly sold at these independent bookstores in North Carolina:

Scuppernong Books - Greensboro

Sunrise Books  - High Point

BookMarks - Winston-Salem

Quail Ridge Books - Raleigh

Park Road Books - Charlotte

Pomegranate Books - Wilmington

Old Books on Front Street in Wilmington

You may purchase autographed copies or request a visit by Mary Flinn at TheOneNovel.com

LUMINA Coming April 1 - No Fooling!

LUMINA will be released April 1. 

Please check back in March for more details. Copies will be available at TheOneNovel.com, Amazon, in Kindle and Nook formats, and in bookstores worldwide by special order.

“It was, after all, eight o’clock. We were perfect for four more hours.”

In the summer of 1928, Lumina, known as the “Palace of Light,” is only reachable from Wilmington, North Carolina by trolley car, where it occupies the entire southern tip of Wrightsville Beach. The grandest beach pavilion on the East Coast creates the backdrop for this fictional tale of young people falling in love—not only with each other but with Lumina itself, where everything is magic from eight until midnight on Saturday nights.

As twenty-year-old Kip Meeks writes in his opening letter to his college pal Perry, “Lumina is the great equalizer for young people who are out for a bit of fun and to celebrate the happiness of youth. The best of the bands come there to play for the summer and thousands of people from all walks of life—tourists and locals, middle-class and aristocrats alike, arrive to dance the evening away on a Saturday night. Many a romance has been born at Lumina, I’ll tell you.” Kip chronicles the summer in weekly letters to Perry, who is laid up in Pinehurst with a broken leg, while Kip’s seventeen-year-old sister Sylvie keeps a diary account of the same events—meeting an heiress with a secret, the jazz explosion, a new dance, and plenty of old front porch gossip—creating a compelling glimpse into two families’ lives.

Fast forward ninety years to the summer of 2018. While going through her late mother Sylvie’s possessions, Anne Borden Montgomery (known from the pages of Flinn’s A Girl Like That) discovers a manuscript that was never published, a novel, compiled from her mother’s diary and her uncle’s letters. AB shares the story on her own front porch with her eager friends, Mr. May, Elle, and Nate, who take turns reading the story aloud, finding interesting parallels in their own lives while becoming acquainted with "new" old friends.

Allegiance is Released

Allegiance, Mary Flinn's eighth novel is released. 

Set in Southern Pines, North Carolina, Allegiance is the story of two Army couples who live as best friends and neighbors off-post from Fort Bragg. The day before the men deploy to Afghanistan, Keri, wife of combat medic Logan Slater, overhears a secret she is not meant to know, which threatens to destroy all four friends. Her children, five-year-old Lacey and three-year-old Cole, hold her to her vow of friendship with neighbor Candy, and loyalty to their father, as she has taught them while explaining the meaning of the Pledge of Allegiance.

“Mary Flinn’s Allegiance is a beautiful glimpse into the lives of characters so rich and authentic you feel every heartache, triumph, loss, and gain. A story of fidelity, heroism, friendship, and family, Flinn leaves you in complete bliss but still wanting more long after you’ve turned the last page.”

     — Sabrina Sells Stephens, author of Banker’s Trust and Canned Good

“Allegiance is the kind of novel that gets under your skin. Infidelity is not an easy or fun topic, but Mary Flinn turns it into a transformative lesson about love, honesty, patience, and understanding that supersedes the characters’ initial pain. I guarantee you will be stunned when all is revealed, and perhaps even a little emotionally healed.”

—   Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. and award-winning author of Narrow Lives and The Best Place

“Cheers for Allegiance! A great work penned by a writer with an acute sense of social and emotional depth. This is a powerful story that quickly had me questioning my own humanity. This book is also a beacon of hope. Most of us have experienced the range of emotions woven into this story at one time or another. Keri and Logan’s journey is a roadmap showing all of us how to treat our fellow man. Mary Flinn at her finest!”

     —  A.W. Hammock, former U.S. Army Ranger and author of Night of the Hatchet

To order your autographed copies, return to the website, www.TheOneNovel.com and click on Buy the Book.