Taking place on September 14 this year in hopes of avoiding the blast furnace August heat, the 2024 Mississippi Book Festival will again feature an incredibly diverse group of authors on its many book panels. I’m honored to be included on the Mississippi Culture panel, moderated by Mississippi Public Broadcasting host Germaine Flood and featuring fellow authors Larry Wells, Diane Williams, and Josh Foreman. My contribution is my second work of non-fiction, Raphael’s Men. Published by the Mississippi Sports Council of Jackson, Raphael’s Men is the true story of the late Bill Raphael, the legendary football coach and math instructor at St. Joseph Catholic School of Jackson.
In addition to winning well over 200 games while coaching a whopping 41 seasons at St. Joe (1950-1990), Coach Raphael’s biggest wins can be found in the vast numbers of students he taught, athletes and non-athletes, who learned kindness, integrity, leadership, and self-confidence from him before developing into stalwarts in the business world, academia, medicine, law, and more. Signed copies will be available September 1 at Lemuria Books of Jackson, and at the MBF.
You’ll enjoy the Mississippi Culture panel in air conditioned comfort, of course. Find us in Room 103 of the Mississippi state capitol building at 2:45 p.m., and be sure to catch the Mississippi Memoirs panel just before ours; it will be in Room 202 of the capitol building and feature X.M. Frascogna Jr., my friend and co-author of the recently released The Saints of St. Mary’s. If you don’t have this one yet, grab a signed copy when you purchase Raphael’s Men!
Brand new Dogwood Press suspense author Scott Lenoir hit the ground running with his tour for The Amendment, his fast-paced debut, and feedback has been very strong. Scott received texts and emails from several old friends the morning after his stop at Lemuria who said they’d planned to start the book, read a chapter or two . . . and absolutely couldn’t put it down until they read every page. Gotta like that!
Catch Scott this Friday evening, August 23, at 6 p.m. for the annual Pie and Prose event at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ocean Springs, where he’ll read from The Amendment and answer questions. He’ll visit the Bonfire Book Club of McComb next Monday, August 26 (absolutely one of our FAVORITE book clubs in the state) before stopping at nearby Summit, Mississippi, the next morning at 11:00 for the first ever signing at brand new Buzy Beez Books!
Candace Cox Wheeler puts as much into her author presentations as any author I know, and certainly any I’ve published. She’s a walking encyclopedia when it comes to her beloved hometown of Biloxi, Mississippi, and that knowledge was on full display at Ground Zero Blues Club of Biloxi and the following week when she visited public libraries in Starkville and Louisville, Mississippi. If you haven’t taken the plunge, grab a signed copy of Sunset in the Sound. It will look great on your shelves next to her excellent Cradle in the Oak and Squall in the Gulf, and you may agree it’s the best of the trilogy!
And a big tip of the cap to old friend and short story writer par excellence John Floyd. It’s been an honor to publish John EIGHT times over the years, and I admire so much his ability to write one fascinating story after another about almost any topic, representing almost any genre, and in remarkably short periods of time. He’s much too humble to brag on himself, so let me do so: the man is a legend.
Check this out: John’s story “Molly’s Plan”, which we included in his story collection Dreamland, published by Dogwood Press in 2016, just showed up in Black Cat Weekly. Okay, it’s not unusual to see a story written by an author reappear in another publication at some point in the future. But look at the exposure “Molly’s Plan” has gotten between its publication before Dreamland and today:
– first appeared in Strand Magazine
– selected for Best American Mystery Stories (praised by James Patterson in his intro to that edition)
– included in Dreamland
– reprinted in Russian in Moscow’s leading literary magazine, Inostranada Literatura
– it has been taught in several high schools and colleges
– considered for film, via a call from someone at LA’s biggest literary agency
– selected for inclusion in the permanent digital archive of the New York Public Library
– most recently selected for Black Cat Weekly
Thanks for your time. I hope I’ve given you lots of leads on outstanding reads! Visit dogwoodpress.com for signed copies of all our titles, and make plans to visit the Dogwood Press tent on Saturday, September 14, at the Mississippi Book Festival as well as enjoying the author panels. Happy reading!