Donna's Muse Papers

For the past decade or so my family and I have gathered together for a week of reunion and recreation on the banks of the Tar River near Franklinton. We do this under the guise of attending Preddy Fest, a bluegrass festival which enjoyed its twenty-first anniversary this year.   The creator of Preddy Fest, Rodney Preddy, allows weekend ticket holders to come onto the farm and camp out the week prior to the concerts. We join the 200 or so campers who gleefully go a whole week without hookups (there is a shower house on the grounds). Some have fancy rigs with generators to power air conditions, others sweat it out in tents. Almost everyone has a golf cart for transportation – Rodney makes rental possible for those who don’t own their own. This year my daughters, granddaughters, and two great-grands along with significant others set up camp: tents and campers, a canopy which served as a communal sitting, picking, eating area – and then it started to rain! Now, let me admit righ

When I was writing my first book, Pale as the Moon (published 1999 by Coastal Carolina Press) I had a vision of who would read it. In my mind I saw a little girl at the beach. She was sitting in one of those Adirondack chairs on the deck of a beach cottage over-looking the ocean. That was because the book is set on the Outer Banks of the NC coast. Pale as the Moon is a good beach read, even some adults have confessed to reading it. This is the season for beach-reading! I haven’t published a new book in a couple of years, but I’d like to introduce you to some friends who have released books this summer. My friend RJ (Bob) McCarthy has just released the third book in his Tony Quarry Carolina Mystery series – Quarry Steps To . The story is set in the rural community of Sligoville where factory closures have left the residents jobless and filled with resentment. Some have turned to criminal activity including drugs. In protecting a retired teacher from teenage vandals, Quarr