I’m pleased as punch (yes, really) to share the first review of Keowee Valley, posted by Jill’s Reviews at Goodreads:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/415241105

Credit: www.berry.edu

In about an hour, I’ll be heading west through the mountains of North Carolina and down into Georgia, where I’m attending the 2012 Southern Women Writers Conference at Berry College. I’ll give a paper there tomorrow with other fiction writers, during a breakout session called “Escaping Beginnings & Coming of Age.” The paper will be a longer excerpt from Keowee Valley, and will highlight Quinn’s initial decision to leave Charlestown (Charleston, S.C.), and her journey into the wilderness.

I’m really quite excited to be attending this conference; there are so many great writers I’m looking forward to hearing from: South Carolina’s own Josephine Humphreys, singer-songwriter-author Marshall Chapman, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, to name a few … not to mention many emerging writers.

Whenever I travel alone (which isn’t often), I get my playlist ready. For this ride, I foresee quite a bit of Southern “girl” power: some Dolly Parton, Sugarland, Alison Krauss, Indigo Girls, the Dixie Chicks, and more.