Local authors thank the Inkplots

Sam Morton, author of Disavowed will be at the SC Book Festival

Three local authors who were nurtured by a local writers’ group, the Inkplots, are bringing new works to this year’s SC Book Festival. The 10th annual festival will be held February 25 and 26 at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.

According to Inkplots president Carla Damron, author of the Caleb Knowles Mysteries , the SC Writers Workshop group is open to writers working in any kind of writing. “We just want people who are serious about their craft but not too serious about life!”

In addition to Damron, debut author Sam Morton and veteran author Bert Goolsby work in the mystery category. “Pat Willer, who works with international students at USC, has a mystery in the works,” said Damron. But Inkplots writers are often versatile, shifting easily from one kind of writing to another.

“Jeff Koob does a little of everything. He self–published a memoir of his Peace Corp experience and now is working on a fantasy/vampire story. And Paula Benson is working on both a mystery and a vampire tale. Debby Johnson is at work on a romance,” said Damron.

Susan Craft, author of A Perfect Tempest, will be at the SC Book Festival. Damron, recently named secretary of the Southeastern Chapter of Mystery Writers of America, said the writers’ group will have a booth at the book festival and will be happy to talk about writing or their collective titles.

Sam Morton

Sam Morton drew from many of his life experiences for his debut novel Disavowed . Author and character share a law enforcement background, but Mike Chandler, the ex–cop willing to risk his life to re–earn respect, is not much like Morton.

Morton’s insider knowledge of crime fighting helped him put Chandler to grueling tests throughout the 275–page book. His 12 years as a professional wrestler enabled him to catch his main character off guard and subject him to head butting and body slamming.

Morton’s love of history led him to choose an unsolved mystery in SC’s history as the catalyst for his story. And his civic pride emboldened him to take on the volatile topic of white supremacy as the intrigue unfolds.

Bert Goolsby, author of Harper’s Joy, will be at the SC Book Festival. The Citadel graduate developed the character of a little girl who is central to his plot around a real little girl he got to know through mission work he was involved in the summer he was working on that phase of his book. At that time his daughter was too young to be the character’s model. Morton and his wife also have a son, and the author’s regard for family shows through in the tender pages.

Morton said the suggestions and critiques he received in the writers’ group as he worked on Disavowed were comparable to those he received from a professional editor he hired, but he didn’t know it until the edits were returned to him.

Bert Goolsby

Since last year’s book festival, Bert Goolsby has added another title to his growing list. The Citadel graduate described Harper’s Joy , out last fall from Grace Abraham Press, as a legal suspense novel.

But Goolsby, a former Chief Deputy Attorney General of SC who once headed the Criminal Division of that office, does not stereotype himself in that genre. His short story, “The Fan Dancer,” about Sally Rand, was published in the anthology More Sweet Tea.

The Dothan, AL native has received word that his piece, “Truck Number Fifteen,” will be included in volume two of The Right Words at the Right Time , a work produced by Marlo Thomas to raise funds for The Children’s Hospital.

His Inkplots colleagues praise his facility with weaving colloquialisms and effective dialogue into his works, and kid him about being a stickler regarding the use of the passive voice.

During his years with the writers’ group, he has produced a number of works in a variety of genres. His published fiction includes The Box with the Green Bow and Ribbon , Her Own Law, Humanity , Darling , and Sweet Potato Biscuits and Other Stories.

Susan Craft

Historical fiction author Susan Craft knows a plot element when she stumbles upon one.

She was working as a communications specialist with the SC Department of Mental Health while researching for her Civil War-era novel, A Perfect Tempest , when she found a reference to use.

“One of my characters is based on Oqui Adair, a Chinese gardener mentioned briefly in a SC State Hospital Board of Regents report. I found it in the SC Department of Archives and History.” Although she found plenty there and at the South Caroliniana Library, she doesn’t mind reaching out for supplemental sources.

“I once ran an ad in the Civil War Times asking for information about Union officers who were imprisoned in Camp Asylum, a prisoner –of–war camp situated on the SC State Hospital grounds in Columbia, SC from October 1864 until February 1865, when Sherman’s troops burned the city.”

Craft’s correspondence with the two men who responded, one from Maine and one from California, continued over several months as she worked on her novel. “They each sent me materials about relatives imprisoned at Camp Asylum: a photograph, a letter, and a excerpt from a diary.”

Since then Craft retired, but has now returned to work with USC’s College of Pharmacy on the main campus where she earned a journalism degree. And she is hard at work on a Revolutionary War novel, Treasures of the Heart.

“Researching for my novels brings me the same excitement Alan Quartermain must have felt hunting for King Solomon’s Mines. I’ve been known to spend an entire day in a library scribbling notes from someone’s diary, spending a wallet of quarters making copies of maps and old newspapers, and trekking from one book or document to the next with a perseverance Lewis and Clark would have applauded. I enjoy the chase when one clue leads me to the next, to the next, and so on.”

Craft cannot remember a time when she did not want to write. “Somewhere in my attic, I still have a book, The Mystery of the Whistling Cave. I wrote and bound it myself when I was eight and enthralled with Nancy Drew.”