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We received a wonderful email the other day from one of our awesome readers, Gail Strong who lives in South Carolina. Along with some really lovely words about our Appalachian Journey series. Gail, who does restoration on old pictures, she was nice enough to include four of the pictures we have on our Meet the Characters page which she had restored. They are absolutely gorgeous and seeing them just blew me away. I’ve included a copy of the business card she sent and want to encourage all of our readers to contact her if you have any pictures to be restored (just click on the pic and it should give you a larger version). We can honestly say Gail does impressive work!
The pictures she restored for us are below. The first one is of Bessie’s parents, Lucinda and John Daniels, and Bessie as a baby. The second is of Lucinda. In both these pictures, you can really see Lucida’s Cherokee heritage. The third picture is of Bessie and Fletch on their wedding day and the fourth is Bessie and Fletcher many years later.
We had a wonderful time last Saturday at the inaugural Mossy Creek Arts Festival in Jefferson City, TN near the beautiful campus of Carson-Newman College. It was a beautiful spring day and the drive to and from Jefferson City was gorgeous with dogwoods and redbuds blooming. Once we got off the interstate, the drive into town with the numerous blooming azaleas was nothing short of glorious.
Beyond all that beauty, we sold and signed a lot of books and met a bunch of new 
readers, including several politicians (election day’s coming up!). The reception we received from the festival facilitators was heartwarming and we were made to feel more than welcome. We also received quite a few invitations to participate in future events in the area. I took notes but most of them look like chicken scratches. Let’s see if I can decipher them:
A lady stopped by who knew the head librarian at the Carson-Newman College Library. She took one of our cards with her to pass along because she said she was sure they’d be interested in having the books.
String art by the kids
The Mayor of New Market, TN introduced himself and invited us to participate in his city’s festival in September, which we look forward to.
Several people stopped by to invite us to participate in Jefferson City’s Old Timer’s Day in October which, from what we understand, is a really fun festival.
We were thrilled to meet Robert Tucker, candidate for Mayor
of Jefferson City, who told us his son Kegan was required to read Whistling Woman in his history class at Jefferson County High School. He was kind enough to ask for a photo of us with him, with me holding the book.
Though it was the smallest festival we’ve ever attended, for us, it was a wonderful, fun day and we’re looking forward to adding the 
Mossy Creek Arts Festival to our permanent calendar of events.
Next up, the Donut Festival in Marion, NC on Saturday, April 21st. It’s a fun festival with lots to do and see and we’re really looking forward to it. We really enjoyed it last year and know we will this year as well.
We’re excited to announce that we’ve been invited to participate in the inaugural Mossy Creek Arts Festival which takes place in the historic Mossy Creek District this Saturday, April 14, in Jefferson City, TN. This is the first festival of its kind and we are so grateful to have been asked to participate. It promises to be a fun time with local artists and crafts people, live music and food. According to the weather, it’s supposed to be a beautiful spring day in the mountains of East Tennessee, and we can’t think of a better way to spend the day. If you’re in the area, we hope you’ll stop by and say hello.
For more information, click on the link above.
To all our fabulous readers! As part of the Amazon February Author Meet & Greet, we wanted to let you know about a chance to win this super cool “Reader Gift Basket” from The No. 1 Site for #Reader #Giveaways~~The Kindle Book Review.
Beginning February 1st, just click the link and follow the instructions. It’s easy & fun. If you love #reading, enter from February 1st to the end of the giveaway on Feb. 28, 2018. Click here and enter every day ~> https://wp.me/P2H01p-aU9
We
hope everyone is enjoying this wonderful season and rejoicing in feelings of love and warmth from family and friends. We also hope you’ll take a moment to celebrate with us the release of our latest book. That’s right, the second book of our Brown Mountain Lights Series, Seeking the Brown Mountain Lights, is now available in ebook on Amazon!
For those who are waiting for the print book, we’ ll be working on that next. As soon as Kim puts the final touches on our beautiful cover (is that thing gorgeious or what?) and we get the file formatted, it’ll be available on Amazon, too. The audiobook will be available soon as well, and we’ll announce both releases here and on our Facebook page, so stay tuned!
We want to wish all our lovely readers a happy, healthy holiday season and may 2018 be your best year yet. Thank you all for your encouragement, support and inspiration. We are truly blessed to have you.
We are moving ever closer to the second book in our Brown Mountain Lights series, tentatively titled Seeking the Brown Mountain Lights, and that means our cover designer, Kim Maxwell, has started working on the cover. I met her for lunch Tuesday to talk about the design. This one is proving to be a challenge but I’m sure Kim will overcome any and all obstacles and create another gorgeous cover like she always has in the past.
This will be the sixth cover she’s designed for us. It all started with Beloved Woman, the third book in our Appalachian Journey series. And we were so impressed, we asked her to do or re-do all of our books.
Next, we asked her to re-design the cover of the second book, Moonfixer , because we weren’t satisfied with the one we had which we made. It was just too dull and though it had the picture of Aunt Bessie and Uncle Fletcher taken on their wedding day we didn’t like it very much. It just didn’t feel like it fit the book so … enter Kim.
We liked what she did with the other two so much we asked her to re-design Whistling Woman, the first book in the series. She changed that one by photographing the picture of Miss Cordy, adding the picture of Mama and Papa with Bessie as a baby and a few sprigs of cedar. I had the pleasure of watching her set it all up using my husband’s grandmother’s old cedar chest as the base. It was fascinating all the things she checked and double checked before she was satisfied with the picture.
The next one she did was the final book of the series, Wise Woman. For this one, Kim and I met for lunch then drove around till we found a place we could pick some of the beautiful purple asters that bloom here in the late summer/early fall so she could use them on the cover. After she put it all together, it was beautiful and ended up being my favorite cover.
When Christy and I decided to write another series we knew right away we wanted Kim to do the covers. The first book in our Brown Mountain Lights series, Through the Brown Mountain Lights, added a few extra hurdles for Kim. First, she would need to go to Morganton and shoot a picture of Brown Mountain and also, she would be designing this one without much if any help from us. For the Appalachian Journey series, we had numerous pictures of Aunt Bessie and pretty much knew which one we wanted to use for each book but for this one we really didn’t have any idea of what to use. No worries, Kim to the rescue.
The writing of the second book in the series is finished which means the hard part for us pretty much done. All we have left is the editing, polishing, and formatting it for e-book and print. While we do that, Kim’s working on the cover which I know will be gorgeous like all her other ones have been. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with!
If you would like to read more about how Kim creates our beautiful covers, check out her blog: Covers, Cats and Clicks. That will take you to a page that lists all the posts she’s done about our books.
Sorry we’ve been AWOL for so long but we’ve been busy writing the second book in our Brown Mountain Lights series, tentatively titled Searching for the Brown Mountain Lights. More on that later …
First, I want to share some news with our awesome readers. Our publisher who did the French translation of Whistling Woman, Les deces arrivent toujours par trois, asked us to participate in a free giveaway to French readers. The book will be available free for a short time starting on November 6th. So, if you’re fluent in French or know anyone who is, you might want to check it out, and to our French readers who have made the book so popular, thanks so much! Like all our readers, we are blessed to have you!
Christy and her husband came over the mountain last week and
spent several days so Christy and I could visit various libraries in the area. That’s the beautiful Burnsville library in the picture. It had been a while since we’d done this and we were thrilled to find most of the libraries already had copies of our books, including Through the Brown Mountain Lights, the first book in our Brown Mountain Lights series. We were even more thrilled to find out they had ordered them after receiving several requests from their patrons to stock the books.
We also visited several stores and were pleased with the interest they showed in displaying and selling our books. Not just bookstores but hardware stores, general stores, and stores that cater to area tourists.
We’re happy to say, we are now available in lots of area libraries and various stores around western North Carolina. We’re putting together a list for our website where the books are available and will post that in the near future.
On Wednesday afternoon, we went to Aunt Bessie’s cabin on Stone Mountain. It now belongs to David Gilliam (relative of the Possum Gilliam we write about in the Appalachian Journey series). He and Becky Bussert, owner of Smith’s Old Country Store in Black Mountain (who also sells our books) had arranged a get-together for us with several people or relatives of people Daddy knew while he lived with Aunt Bessie and Uncle Fletch. It was incredible to finally put a face with the stories we grew up hearing and to hear more stories and see the house where we visited our great aunt when we were children. David’s brother Jake, who built the cabin and is
now deceased, kept in mind the old house and it looks very much as it did when we were kids. David now rents it as a vacation rental cabin and, according to the guest log, it’s very popular. We wondered if anyone ever hears the slave ghosts Bessie heard but forgot to ask David.
In the picture: Becky Bussert, Janice Means, David Gilliam, Joyce and Lawrence Elliot (Uncle Fletch was his uncle). Lawrence’s sister, Lois, was also there but had to leave early.
Why, you may ask, are you running around western North Carolina instead of writing? Well, that would be because we finished writing the second book in our Brown Mountain Lights series and decided to take a little break before we dive into the hard part, editing, editing, editing and polishing until we have the final draft ready to publish. We’ll announce its release here and on our CC Tillery Facebook page, so stay tuned!
That’s it for now. Have a fabulous weekend, everybody!
Friday and Saturday, September 8th and 9th, we participated in the Historic Morganton Festival in beautiful Morganton, North Carolina. We couldn’t have asked for a better day, with gorgeous cerulean skies dotted with puffy white clouds and highs in the 70s. Or for a 
better site, being placed on the lawn of the historic Old Courthouse, which is where William Waightstill Avery shot his nemesis Samuel Fleming, and which we write about in our book Through the Brown Mountain Lights.
This is the largest festival we’ve yet attended with close to 1000 vendors and I would estimate fifty thousand or more attendees. So
many, the streets were packed throughout the festival. During the day, the crowd was entertained with live music (at one point, I wondered if Tina Turner was actually there!) with live concerts each evening. We loved it when a bluegrass band set up next to our booth and played during the afternoon.
We were pleased when several of those who bought books commented they had read about us in the paper and wanted to come meet us. And even more thrilled when Ed Phillips, Director of Tourism at the Burke County Tourism Development Authority, stopped by to chat and ask if he could add our book to an exhibit he’s putting together about the Brown Mountain lights. Ed is 
known for the symposiums he holds on this subject and we’re looking forward to visiting Morganton when he unveils the exhibit around Halloween. We had fun chatting with readers, always asking if they had seen the Brown Mountain lights. More than a few actually had and it was fascinating listening to their stories and descriptions about the lights, which only made them more 
mysterious to us the more stories we heard.
Our cousins Mary Paris Merriken and Melinda Paris stopped by. We’re related to them through Lucinda Henderson, Bessie’s mother. I knew we were descendants of Clan Henderson through Lucinda, but Melinda and Mary told us we are descended from several other clans in Scotland, one of which is the Balfour clan. Didn’t Diana Gabaldon write about a Balfour in her Outlander series? Whether she did or not, it’s great knowing we can definitely claim Scottish heritage. Mary has done extensive research on Bessie’s cousin Frank Henderson, the first man to die in the electric chair in North Carolina (skeletons in closets, right?), and is planning a book which we look forward to reading.
All in all, we had a fantastic day with the added bonus of breaking our sales record. We’ve been so blessed with these festivals and library and book club presentations and signings this year, and appreciate more than we can ever express our fabulous readers, who are always so inspiring and 
encouraging. Y’all are absolutely the best!
Up next: Art on the Island in Marshall, NC on September 30th, and the Mars Hill Heritage Festival on October 7th.
We had the best time at the Bluff Mountain Festival in Hot Springs this past weekend! Nice weather–look at that beautiful sky!–live bluegrass music, lots of readers, some known and some new. This is a special festival for us because it’s the first one we ever attended, instilling in us a love for these events. This past Saturday was the fourth time we’ve participated and although you might think attending the same festival in a town as small as Hot Springs year after year would get old, all we can say is it doesn’t. Every time we go, we come away surprised, inspired and happy.
We started off the day selling our first books before the festival even started then moved on to have a record number of sales before lunch. This was a complete surprise for us as usually this festival is slow in the mornings and we make the majority of our sales during the afternoon. But this time, we broke our top sales record before noon.
Things slowed down a bit after lunch but the readers kept coming and by the end of the day we’d sold 
completely out of Whistling Woman and Through the Brown Mountain Lights! I won’t say it’s getting old in the case of Whistling Woman, since we’ve sold out of it at other festivals we’ve attended, but when we realized we’d sold out of Through the Brown Mountain Lights … well, I’ll just say there were multiple happy dances going on, in our heads, of course. And by the end of the day, despite the fact we couldn’t get our Square to connect so we could accept credit cards, we’d not only broken our all-time sales record, we shattered it. More happy dances!
But as always, the best part of the day was seeing our readers, both the ones we’d already met and the new ones, talking to them about the Appalachian Journey series and introducing them to the new series. We can’t even begin to tell you how much the favorable response inspires us to continue writing. We’ll definitely be keeping that feeling close as we finish the next book in the Brown Mountain Lights series.
This year, while there were fewer vendors at the festival, there was a much larger crowd. We saw some family members we’d met before and also met some new ones (a huge thank you to our ever supportive reader and cousin many times removed, Mary Paris Merriken) which we always enjoy. We had people who came specifically to the festival to see us and get books signed and people who came to buy print books even though they had already purchased the series on Kindle.
All in all, it was a wonderful day and though we enjoyed the new sales record and the sellouts, we have to say,
the best part was the reunions with known readers and family members and meeting new ones. And once again, we have to say it, we are so blessed to have all of you in our corner!
Oops, I almost forgot, be sure to watch our CC Tillery Facebook page this week. We’ll be announcing a give-away!
Christy and I were invited to give a presentation at the beautiful Old Fort Library yesterday and we had such a good time. It’s getting so we enjoy these short events more than the festivals. They don’t take up a whole day and we get to know our readers more since it is a smaller crowd and we can spend one on one–or should I say two on one? — time with them.
Yesterday was especially fun for us because almost everyone who was there either knew Aunt Bessie and Uncle Fletch, and in some cases, Daddy, too, or they had relatives that knew them. And the best part, they knew most of characters we wrote about in the books and kindly shared some stories about them with us. I don’t think I’ve laughed so much in a very long time. The hour and a half we spent with them was like going to a family reunion or homecoming.
So, a word of thanks to Ashley Salazar for inviting us to speak. She did a fantastic job with the set up. And thanks to all the ladies that came out to meet us: Becky Bussert, Janice Means, Mary Lee Lytle, Kiesa Kay, and Karen Nilsen, just to name a few. I would love to relay the stories they told us … but who knows, maybe we’ll end up writing them instead. But first, we need to finish the second Brown Mountain Lights book!
CTHodges
christytilleryfrench
CC TILLERY 