Wow, do we have a wonderful line-up for the 3rd Annual Tri-County Literary Celebration! Not only have we added some amazing events, but we have over 50 authors and publishers joining us to exhibit their works and sell their books.
Meet the Authors & Publishers
Miki Bennett
With a passion for wholesome adventure, Miki Bennett is the author of two contemporary women’s fiction series – A Florida Keys Romance and Camping In High Heels. A deep love of the beach and life-long experience in the RV and camping world led her to write romance novels that bring humor and paradise to readers’ fingertips.
Village Museum
This will be a group from the Village Museum from McClellenville.
Acclaimed as one of the finest small town museums in the state. The Village museum opened in April 1999. Exhibits demonstrate a time line of history beginning with villages of the Seewee Indians and the settlement at Jamestown, S.C. by the French Huguenots, through the rice planting on the great Santee plantations and the establishment of the town of McClellanville as a coastal resort.
Carole Brier
About Carole’s book, River of Memories. “Victoria Warneck and Carole Reno Brier have written the compelling story of Victoria’s childhood. Set in Poland and Germany, Victoria tells of her experiences as a child living in Hitler’s Germany, and the years she and her family lived in a Displaced Persons Camp in Braunschweig, Germany.”
Sherman Carmichael
South Carolina is well known for beaches, barbecue and palmetto trees, but plenty of mystery lies behind the idyllic façade. Some residents once claimed to be tormented by a creature that was part lizard and part man. South of the Border is one of the more famous and unique tourist attractions in the state–complete with a giant sombrero. Lynches River is the only river in the nation that crosses under the same bridge three times. Peachtree Rock Heritage Preservation in Lexington County is home to one of the most unusual natural formations in the United States. Author Sherman Carmichael details these and more in a collection of stories that can be found only in the Palmetto State.
Lakeyshuh Carolina
About Carolina’s How Can I Please God? – “Camden is a young boy who is at the beginning of his Christian journey and has many questions about how to be become a better Christian. The first question he wants answered is how he can please God and he is determined to find the answers he is look for. How can I please God is a book that children can read and be able to understand that they too can serve God in many different ways. This book will also show children that, no matter how young they are or how much they know, they too can bring forth change in others.”
Michael Case
About Case’s Deadly Toxins of Unhealthy Churches – The topic of spiritual health is not a very popular one in most churches today. It is a very sensitive and taboo topic that many church organizations would rather not confront. The records however, show that based on the impact on members’ lives, the differences between healthy and unhealthy churches make this discussion one of paramount importance to the Body of Christ. This is largely so because the scars of spiritual abuse, resulting from spiritual toxicity, can last for a lifetime. The fact is that there are churches that spiritually abuse their members. It is a growing trend in Christendom where unhealthy churches have commandeered the lives of millions of followers. Unconditional love is not to be found in these organizations. One has to earn that love and acceptance through performance.
K. V. Case
About Case’s This Side of Destiny – There’s a battle brewing in Destiny, Florida, and it’s not just over the proposed town limits. When youth minister Zak Isaaks rescues one of his former Sunday school pupils from the streets, he has no idea what he’s in for. But Rachel Moreno isn’t the child he once knew, and she tugs at his heart in unexpected ways, hurling his well-laid ministry plans into chaos and his brotherly intentions out the window.
Holt Clarke
Holt is the father of the coolest kids on earth, on Santa’s Nice List, and keep’n the magic real with his family in Charleston, South Carolina. Besides writing imaginative fiction, Holt is the Owner/Broker-In-Charge of Charlestonian Properties LLC, CharlestonianProperties.com .
Holt earned the Doctor of Ministry degree from Drew University, Master of Divinity degree from Duke University, and Bachelor of Arts degree from North Carolina Wesleyan College.
Margie Clary
Margie Willis Clary was born in the Piedmont section of South Carolina. Her father was a Baptist minister. After graduating from Furman University with a Bachelor Degree in Education, she taught in Greenville County until moving with her family to Charleston in 1965. She received a Master in Education from The Citadel and taught on James Island until her retirement in 1988. Since retirement, Clary has worked as an adjunct professor at The Citadel and at Charleston Southern University. As a storyteller, Margie travels throughout the state working in schools as an artist-in-residence with the South Carolina Arts Commission. She presents workshops, both locally and statewide on the use of literature and storytelling in curriculum. She also is available for “Meet the Author” presentations.
Larry Dandridge
A retired Army Master Aviator. Larry Dandridge is the chief operating manager, editor, and a writer with Tigers, Vikings, and Vipers Publishing, LLC. His leadership, aerospace, business, and logistics articles have been published in over 24 magazines, journals, and newspapers and two books in the US, Germany, and England. The recipient of four Silver Quill Awards, he was the proposals manager and senior writer for over 75 winning proposals for the logistics and business process re-engineering sectors of the companies he has been employed with.
Jim Eberwein
Jim Eberwein is the Grandfather of eighteen children located in North Carolina and Massachusetts. He has also traveled the world as a Business/Industry Consultant and lived in the United States, Mexico, England and Russia. With that many grandchildren and having traveled extensively, Jim has the background to develop many stories and adventures that ”Simply Sam” will experience. There is always something that comes up on a daily basis that will be the seed for another story.
Rhonda Edwards
Raised in southeastern North Carolina, Rhonda has lived in Charleston, South Carolina since 1980. She married her high school sweetheart over 30 years ago and together they have a son, daughter-in-law, and two beautiful granddaughters.
Mary Ferguson
About Ferguson’s God’s Grace for Sam – A mother’s heart races so quickly, she feels as if it could jump right out of her chest. A few scant moments earlier, she had been completely at peace with God. It only took a sudden phone call that particular Sunday evening to shatter her peacetime. Her son, Graham, had been in a horrific automobile accident. EMS suspected multiple brain injuries. This high school senior, known for his friendliness, popularity and activities in his church, faced a dim future. Her son’s coma lasted for weeks, with Mom by his side as much as allowed. The doctors had warned that her son’s life was not looking hopeful. One day, Graham’s mother noticed his toes were moving. The physicians said it was an involuntary move and it meant nothing, but don’t ever tell a parent her child doesn’t know what he is doing. After some time, it was obvious, he did understand.
Bonnie J. Freeman
About Freeman’s Betsy’s True Farm Stories of the 1950’s – This book contains true stories told by a Kentucky farm girl who lived on the farm as a teenager. They’re are meant to be shared by a young person and maybe a parent discussing the economic and social culture in the fifties as compared to 2016. Therefore, there is provocative question at the end of each little story.
Virginia C. Hart
Virginia C. Hart resides in her beloved state of South Carolina, where she was born and raised. Married for fourteen years, she and her husband have two beautiful children. After graduating from Francis Marion University with a bachelor’s degree in accounting, followed by a master’s degree in education, Hart has been teaching part-time at the local technical college for nearly a decade.
Christine Hampton
About Hampton’s The History of Lincolnville, South Carolina – In 1867, seven men with ties to the African Methodist Episcopal church founded a new town between Summerville and Charleston, South Carolina, which they called Lincolnville. It quickly filled with hopeful families who just a decade before had been enslaved. Through the years the town’s citizens have established strong institutions that have served as the town’s foundation. The local school operated from 1899 until 1969, one of the state’s few extant African-American schools from the nineteenth century. Land for the Ebenezer A.M.E. Church was purchased just two years after the town was founded, and the first building was constructed in 1878; today the town boasts six churches. This history by two native daughters highlights the people who have been the strength of the town…
Dale Ann Hawkins
More about Hawkins’ Two Carolina Girls – Two Carolina Girls sail through the Low country creeks and marshes with their father, exploring the local habitats. From Oyster Catchers to American Alligators the girls are fascinated with the wildlife he introduces to them. As you read through the pages of this exciting and educational story, use your mobile device to instantly locate more information. From Ghost Crabs to Blue Crabs, embedded QR codes provide a quick and easy way to open related websites featured in this unique book.
Michael Heitzler
More about Goose Creek Mayor Heitzler’s newest novel The Goose Creek Bridge – The Goose Creek Bridge is the gateway to the Saint James, Goose Creek Parish in South Carolina and the church, cemeteries, chapels, and sanctuaries within. The work chronicles the bridge as it conveyed congregants to the pews of the church on selected Easter Sundays during every era of the three-hundred-year saga and describes from that perspective, key personalities and their salient institutions transcending centuries in a small but critically important section of South Carolina.
Lisa Jackson
About Jackson’s Glory Days: Sophomore Year – Sophomore year of high school starts out rocky and downright depressing for Courtney, Jason, and friends. Jason’s mother continues to fight cancer, Will heads off to college, and that’s just the start of problems. But more is in store for these young friends who try to live and love in light of the cross. Some friendship lines begin to blur as they grow closer to each other.
Ann Jeffries
ANN JEFFRIES, the critically acclaimed author of the Family Reunion—Wisdom of the Ancestors series, is a native of Washington, DC. As an only child, she enjoyed the benefits of a private school education at Allen in Asheville, North Carolina, and a public education at the University of Maryland. She began writing fiction for her own amusement.
Relevant Pages Press (Publisher)
Relevant Pages Press, LLC is an AUTHOR-FOCUSED independent, collaborative publishing house. We look for manuscripts with inspirational, positive, and uplifting content. (The world needs a little more of all of that, don’t you think?) All our books are available in trade paper and ebook, with audio books soon to come. As authors ourselves, we know success comes when we put our support and resources behind the authors themselves. That’s why we’ve built RPP around their three biggest needs: encouragement, education, and marketing support. Our authors also support, encourage, and promote each other, raising the level of everyone’s success.
Nadine Johnson
About Nadine Johnson – I was born on the island of Jamaica, but I currently reside in South Carolina. My love for writing began many years ago during college. However, it wasn’t until the birth of my son that I started writing for children. It was difficult for me to find inspiring books that featured African American boys, so I decided to create stories for my son and other children his age. I wanted to create books that were fun to read but also promote conversation between parent/teacher and child.
My company, 123 Mango Tree LLC, promotes literacy through reading, music, and art. I like creating products that empower and motivate children to learn and read.
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Joggling Board Press (Publisher)
The joggling board is an apt metaphor for the spirit of Joggling Board Press – a way of bringing diverse people together in comity. Joggling boards are long, capable of seating many at one time. By joggling simultaneously, eventually everyone winds up side by side. So it is for the talented people who make up Joggling Board Press. The decidedly unconventional press has forged its own path with the many books it has undertaken, melding the talents of poets, historians, scholars, journalists, photographers, painters, musicians and designers. At JBP, books are not made in silos. Here, the making of a book is a collaborative experience involving many minds and modes.
Betts Keating
About Keating – Betts (no, it’s not short for anything) Keating currently resides in South Carolina with her husband and 2 daughters. A proud former New Yorker, who originally grew up in the South, Betts perpetually tries to figure out exactly where she “lives.” In a former life, she worked full-time as a graphic designer in various ad agencies and publishing companies in NYC. In this life, she is learning how to balance her work as a freelance graphic designer with her starring role in the long-running series called Motherhood.
Jan Kelleher
Janet Sheppard Kelleher, an inspirational Southern humorist, writes a column called “Havin’ My Cotton-Pickin’ Say.” Her work appears in Chicken Soup for the Soul, Not Your Mother’s Book, and several other anthologies.
Anthony Kelly
About Kelly’s Saving Miss Caroline – With his muscular arms wrapped tightly around my midsection, squeezing the life out of me from behind, he leaned back, and before I knew what was happening, he had me in the air; my feet had left the ground. Quickly, and completely out of my control, I came crashing to the cool earth with a loud thump. After a summer visit to Harlem, New York, Travis Moore comes back to South Carolina with a newfound understanding of the game of basketball and a necessary toughness that is needed when he decides to stand up to the school bully Big Ray. Eventually he demonstrates just how courageous he is when he’s faced with a life-or-death decision on his eleventh birthday. Saving Miss Caroline is about the importance of family and true friendship, especially in the midst of trouble.
Kay Kennedy
About Kay – Kate spends much of her time on a quiet barrier island – Isle of Palms, near Charleston, South Carolina and frequently returns to the Pacific Northwest, where she grew up. She loves spending time on Coeur d’Alene Lake in Idaho and exploring the islands of Puget Sound. Living near the sea or a lake is where she finds her magical inspiration. Her two children, Lisa (Iz) and Devon and two calico cats named Ginger and Cali-coon, keep her entertained and inspire her with their adventures.
Kate has a bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from Gonzaga University. She worked as a Art Consultant, Artist and Gallery owner for the first part of her career, and is still happily painting, and now has added writing children’s, middle grade and (YA) young adult books to her projects. The best part: working from her home studio and just letting her imagination run wild.
Sharon Michelle Moore Kirkland
About Kirkland’s Emotions From the Heart and Soul: Book One – Emotions from the Heart and Soul is the author’s first book. It’s about the emotions and feelings that each character experiences and stories that are being told. When you begin to read the stories you soon become the characters as you are drawn into their lives. Then there is that connection you start to feel with each one while experiencing their emotions. These are true feelings and emotions from the author’s life of experiences. Putting these feelings and emotions into stories are a way of healing the pain of the past. By writing the stories, they describe some insight on the author’s true feelings from the heart. She has added a little fiction mixed in with the nonfiction to entice your appetite for a good book. A great author never reveals her true source in writing a memorable book.
Crystal Klimavicz
About Klimavicz – I grew up in a small town on the coast of Maine, spent a few years in Boston, met my husband and then moved to Atlanta, Georgia. Together, we lived three event-filled years abroad in Kyiv, Ukraine, and we now reside outside of Charleston, South Carolina with our two children, two dogs and one plump cat.
I published my first novel in 2014, Falling Through Trees: a poignant story about two sisters, family loss, and learning to let go of the past. My second novel, This Side of Perfect, continued in the ‘Kate Harriman’ series of family drama, life struggles, and survival. On the side, I interviewed fifteen pre-centennials to capture their life stories, published in a book, The Days of Not So Long Ago.
James Krych
About Krych’s The Flight to Oz Book I: Arrival – Visitors from the future have been brought to Oz in a spaceship unlike anything anyone from Oz has ever seen! An unspeakable evil has been waiting and growing stronger for 120 years for their moment to strike. Glinda the Good has been given a Vision by Lurline herself on how to deal with the evil. Will Ozma follow the Vision? Will Glinda learn in time?
Mary Kunsman
About Kunsman – The Charleston Gazette calls Mary the “Volunteer who gives the gift of her voice.” And what a gift it is! Mary began singing at home in Columbia, SC, as a child and later at Columbia’s First Presbyterian Church. Her mother, Ethel Neal, was the children’s choir mother and Mary enjoyed singing with her mother and father, Arthur Neal, in the church choir and the Columbia Choral Society. She has been singing ever since. What’s New? Mary has published her memoirs! Come along on a journey through eight decades of Americana with Mary’s Loves Remembered. Her story begins in post-Depression South Carolina and walks you through World War II, past the final years of the twentieth century, arriving at her present day. Mary will have you laughing and crying as she weaves her tales.
Violet Tempest
About Tempest – “They’re all around us. All you have to do is look.” Violet Tempest Violet Tempest enjoys researching the strange and unusual; for as she puts it, there’s more to life than meets the eye. Which probably explains why, when she puts ink to paper, she pens stories about the strange and unusual. Stories which she hopes will keep you turning page after page.
Yusef Marshall
About Marshall’s Heart of the Stepfather – Stepfathers, you are much more than a placeholder. You are the unsung hero in a minefield! You are necessary! Do you see yourself as just a husband? Can you see the father and leader you are designed to be? Are you contemplating giving up on all that you built? Maybe your answer is literally in your hands. The blended family, after centuries, still languishes in the background of the American family snapshot. Well, something is wrong with this picture. Yusef M. Marshall wrote The Heart of the Stepfather to share his personal testimony and uses simple wisdoms, sarcastic humor, and a direct but loving approach to what he believes is a critical issue that has gone unnoticed. Time to break some chains! He’ll show you some of the traps and pitfalls he fell into so you don’t have to. The Heart of the Stepfather will change the way you see you.
Anne W Mhorelund
About Mhorelund’s Broken Branch – The year was 1939 when a small community near Augusta, Georgia first heard TC utter the riveting phrase, “Keep your elbows resting on the needle.” TC, a lumberjack and a rich timber baron made a pack. They had stepped across each others’ shadows since young boys – one being of enormous wealth the other having a perfect aim and strength for felling 60’ pines and cypress trees. Amidst civil strife, TC convinced a small contingency of friends to follow him deep into the forest across the rugged Acorn Trail to grow their own dreams. On an early morning in May 1945 ten covered wagons had reached the Acorn trail. Having been separated by politics, religion, race and the volatile mixture of love and revenge, few could ever return as the road home was splattered with the blood and ill deeds many had left behind.
Dianne Miley
About Miley – Based on towns in northeast Ohio where I lived many years, Crystal Falls is a fictional conglomerate of Chagrin Falls and Chardon, Ohio. Our family now lives in coastal South Carolina where we enjoy the balmy climate. Like my characters, I enjoy gardening. Back in zone 5, I knew every leaf in the landscape. Here in zone 9, not even the grass is the same! I love the tropical plants and have found ligustrum is similar to lilacs. Camellias bloom in winter instead of peonies in summer. I’ve needed a crash course in southern gardens, not only to whip my yard into shape (still working on that) but to write my books.
Sheila Mills
About Mills’ Crossing Your Jordan In Faith – In the Old Testament, the Israelites took an intimidating, faith-filled journey across the Jordan River to move forward into the land God promised. For believers in the twenty-first century, our modern-day Jordan represents facets of our daily Christian walk–obstacles, temptations, and detours that threaten to push us off course. In Crossing Your Jordan in Faith author Sheila L. Mills invites you to discover that God’s covenant promise to the Israelites as they journeyed across the Jordan is still available to us. Nothing is too hard for God, and it is only through faith in the Creator that we can reach our inherited place of promise. So get moving to the edge of your Jordan and prepare for God to move mightily on your behalf. Are you still standing there? Keeping going–your Jordan awaits.
Sybil Nelson
About Nelson – I have always had a love of the written word. While I was in grade school I would dedicate each summer to a different author and then ride public transportation from my low-income housing to the library in order to quench my literary thirst. I love stories and characters that feel like they are someone you know or a part of your family. I noticed, however, that the books I loved never had any black female characters. If I wanted to read about characters who looked like me, I had to go to a different section of the library. Thus, I began to create story lines and characters that extended beyond the books I loved. While working as a math teacher and finishing my master’s degree in Mathematics at the College of Charleston, I began my writing career. To date I have multiple novels published under several names.
Roger Newman
Roger Newman, M.D. is a novelist, academic Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialist and member of the faculty at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). Dr. Newman is a tenured Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Maas Endowed Chair for Reproductive Sciences. Dr. Newman grew up in Columbia, S.C. and attended Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. He returned to South Carolina to attend MUSC and stayed in Charleston for his residency training in Ob-Gyn. He followed his residency with a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in Maternal-Fetal Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and the Cardiovascular Research Institute. Dr. Newman then returned to the academic faculty at MUSC where he continues to practice.
Kelly Owen
About Owen – 2 ½ degrees and 20 years—that’s how long Kelly Owen has been in higher education: first as a student and then as an instructor of English composition and literature. With two degrees in English, she was well on her way to a third degree when something happened on the road to getting a doctorate—a novel idea, literally, that changed the course of her quest and resulted in the first book in a series of four titled, The College Chronicles.Informed by her studies at the University of South Carolina, where she obtained a bachelor’s while working as a photographer for The Gamecocknewspaper, the novel fictionally reflects much of her experience as a student and even more as a college instructor, a professional pursuit she embraced thanks to some unlikely advisers. Following graduation, Kelly returned to her hometown of Georgetown, South Carolina, with hopes of attending law school. Slinging drinks as a bartender paid the bills but spouting Shakespeare as a substitute teacher provided the inspiration for a change in career direction when her students convinced her to become an educator and to give up the attorney dream.
Carl Possehl
About Possehl’s God, What Should I Do? – God, what should I do? — Whom should I marry? What job should I take? Which church should I attend? Should we have another child? Should we move? Questions like these bring Christians directly into an everyday issue of trying to discern or know the will of God in a given situation. Some would say the will of God is indiscernible. The truth is, one of the privileges for a Christian is the ability to find and know the will of God.
Sherry Schumann
About Schumann – Having traveled along a journey of healing and redemption, Sherry’s greatest joy is the LORD. She leads women’s Bible studies, speaks at Christian retreats, and co-chairs a community James 1:27 Team (support group for those of us who care for elderly parents). Her wildlife photography from the South Carolina Lowcountry is featured at women’s prayer and healing services. She and her husband are blessed with three sons, two daughter-in-laws, and an adorable granddaughter.
Sherry’s first novel, The Christmas Bracelet, was published by WestBow Press. She also published an Easter drama, They Knew No Easter, by Lillenas. Her article “Meeting Jesus at the Toilet Bowl’ (strange title but definitely worth the read) will soon appear in Christmas Moments.
Arylias Nova
Arylias Nova is a Texas born SciFi/Fantasy and Horror writer currently living in Charleston, SC. Growing up geek in Charleston, she quickly found her calling in life as a writer and has since produced the first two installments of her Stories of Ghardar SciFi series, Spark and Ignition, and is working quickly on the third, Combustion. Loving the horror genre herself, she put together a series of horror shorts in her A Peek Inside collection and her dark-humored novella series Parenting During the Apocalypse.
Palmetto Publishing Group
Founded and headquartered in Charleston, SC, Palmetto Publishing Group is a full-service publishing company. We offer traditional, hybrid, and self-publishing services! We strongly believe in providing a personal experience with each author we work with and want them to be a part of the full publishing process. We have worked with various authors on a plethora of topics including self-help, YA fiction, memoir, general adult fiction, and more.
Joseph Stringer
About Stringer’s Ten Commandments of Business – Rejoice and be glad for we are in the midst of a battle for the soul of business in America. For too long, business has acted in ways counter to the gospel message. “God in the Workplace” is a Christian Ministry which focuses on practical ways to bring Christian witness into the marketplace. The Ten Commandments For Business provides a practical guide using God’s law to point out the positive actions we will take to make Jesus Christ the center of our business life.
Jennifer Tubbiolo
Jennifer Tubbiolo is an Amazon bestselling author in Young Adult fiction. The books in her series, The Narthex Academy Series, are supernatural action adventure stories. They center on 16-year-old Asher Haynes, his friends Maclaine and Jackson, and their fight against the demonic army of the Dark Prince alongside the angel warriors of Elohim. Jennifer majored in English at San Diego State University and wrote a thesis her senior year on children’s literature. Early on in her career, she was a children’s book buyer and worked in traditional publishing. She now writes full time.
Dawn Walker
The Adventures of Kit Kat is the brainchild of Dawn Cherie Walker. In 1995, she woke one morning and this entire tale was in her mind. She typed it out and held onto it for 21 years before publishing it in April 2016. It has been therapy for the author, finally getting her story in print. Sharing this story has been a real joy!
Creating new adventures for Kit Kat takes some brainstorming with friends and coworkers on what would the message be for children; issues like bullying and being lost; not judging a book by its cover.
Dawn lives in Goose Creek, SC with her husband and two cats, Bella and Cat Mandu. She takes care of stray cats and when they are tame, she takes them to a no-kill shelter. She loves animals of all kinds. Except for spiders; she doesn’t like spiders.
Olivia Washington
About Washington’s Astraea – After reuniting with her father, Jupiter Minor, seventeen-year-old Astraea’s curiosity of his whereabouts drives her to venture out of the comforting boundaries of Earth to worlds that her eyes could never fathom capturing. Coaxing him to take her to the ringed world of Saturn, she meets and instantly falls in loves with the general of Saturn’s army, Alexius, only to find out later that he is the wayward husband of Ganymede’s only daughter, Eris.
Filled with the rage of her late father, Eris makes an attempt to end Astraea’s life, but unbeknownst to her, Astraea’s life is spared, not only by Jupiter, but by a power strong enough to claim a human as its heart.
Angela Williams
Hush Now, Baby is the story of how a little white girl climbed out of an uneasy childhood in the segregated South…on the backbone of a black woman who loved her unabashedly. A host of African-American women permeated Southern families. One of those stalwart women was Eva Aiken, a central figure in the author’s life from her birth…until Eva staged a sit-in at the girl’s wedding.
Daniel Hill Zafren
Zafren is the author of 14 books, His first novel, In a World We Never Made, published in 2001, is a “scholarly novel.” set in the early 70s, portions of nonfiction are interjected into a story of professors and students dealing with the age-old problems of identity and desire.
