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Why I Love the Libby App
When my kids were younger, I used to frequent the library almost weekly, even more during the months of June, July, and August when the summer reading programs were in full swing. During the height of the pandemic, my visits came to a screeching halt. I was focused on keeping my job as a magazine editor and trying to launch a podcast. I knew there was an app called OverDrive that was supposed to allow you to check out books from the library digitally on your Kindle, but I found it clunky and difficult to use. Around 2022 I discovered the Libby app, which is owned by OverDrive but much more user-friendly. All I…
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Who Murdered Pamela Hoy?
On July 25, 1990, 41-year-old Pamela Mitchell Hoy had dinner with her husband Fred Hoy at a Burlington restaurant, and then went home and packed her gray Dodge van with her clothes and grooming tables, exercise runs, and crates. Pam raised and showed Italian greyhounds and was preparing for a trip that would take her to South Carolina the next day to a competition. She had plans to take her 11-year-old daughter on that trip. She went back inside the house to give her oldest daughter a magazine before leaving. She was expected at her parents’ home later that evening around 10:30 p.m., but never arrived. Pam Hoy grew up in the Greensboro…
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Book Review: The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
I picked up this novel by author Liz Moore for two reasons—many other authors and reviewers whose opinions I respect recommended it and I wanted to see if it was a comparative title to my latest work in progress, a novel about a podcaster whose sister disappears from a North Carolina summer camp. Basically, I couldn’t get away from this book. I saw it everywhere I went, from online spaces, podcasts, and prominently displayed on the front tables at my local bookstores. Here’s the official synopsis: Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter…
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The Unsolved Murders of Pamela Murray and Beverly Sherman
Thirty-eight years ago, a young woman baked cookies with her aunt and then headed off to a local mall, probably to pick up a gift for her fiancé for Valentine’s Day. The two had plans to celebrate with a dinner out later that evening. But that young woman never made it inside the mall. Instead, she was forced back inside her car by an unknown assailant and found murdered a few miles away just a short time later. Investigators eventually linked her murder with another homicide of a local 17-year-old girl who had a prostitution arrest on her record. While the two victims came from very different backgrounds, it appears only one man…
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Book Review: The Devil at His Elbow
I recently read the true crime book “The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty” by Valerie Bauerlein. I shared my thoughts in the video below.
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New Beginnings
It’s nearly the first of the year and the perfect time for new beginnings, but if you’re like me, the wintertime often brings an unwelcome writing slump. With the past year being a rolling coaster of exciting news (a short story published in a new publication, readying a manuscript for submission, a few full manuscript requests), I also wrote myself into an incendiary burnout by year’s end. In early November, right after the loss of my grandfather who was the rock on the maternal side of our family, the dream I thought might be just within my reach began to drift away. Two of the agents who’d requested the full manuscript reached back out…
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The Abduction and Murder of Hubbard Harris, Jr. in South Carolina
On December 23, 1933, a 15-year-old young man named Hubbard H. Harris, Jr. went missing from the Columbia, South Carolina area on his birthday The boy was the son of Hubbard Harris, Sr., vice president of Home Stores, Inc., a grocery chain. Forty-eight hours after he went missing, three residents of the Olympia mill village discovered a body in a deserted home about 11 miles outside of Columbia, underneath a dilapidated mattress. He had been beaten to death, and the murder weapon, a blood-spattered iron bar, was found nearby. Hubbard Jr.’s mother told officers a man had called their home several times to offer her son an employment opportunity. The last time he…
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Guest Post by Marlene Bell, Author of A Hush at Midnight
Today we’re sharing a guest post by author Marlene Bell, author of A Hush at Midnight, as part of her blog tour through WOW! Women on Writing. About the Book: Celebrity chef Laura Harris dwells on the horror of finding her mentor’s body in the groundskeeper’s disheveled bed—pillow and bedding half covering her open eyes—purple bruising around her mouth. A grisly snapshot in time revealing the Texas woman’s last moments during her attack. The elderly matriarch from the small town of Stenburg has left the physical world, and Laura is shattered. She is catapulted headlong into the pursuit of a casual executioner, one bold enough to come and go from the crime scene…
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When Nancy Cooper Went Missing in Cary, N.C.
October is the designated month for bringing awareness to Domestic Violence, but it is a topic I believe we should be talking about year round, as it still remains a prevalent issue in our society. I’ve discussed several cases tied to domestic violence in this podcast, including Patty Jo Pulley from Episode 45, Across State Lines, Maryann and Elaine Boczkowski in Episode 48, Two Wives, Two Deaths, and Shelby Wilkie from Episode 85. Many other missing persons cases likely have ties to domestic violence but just don’t have the solid evidence yet to back that up. On July 12, 2008, 34-year-old Nancy Cooper from Cary, N.C., went missing while out on a run.…
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The Drowning Death of Brenda Anderson in South Carolina
On the afternoon of June 19, 1965, a little girl playing on the shore of Folly Beach, South Carolina came across the deceased body of a woman wearing a two-piece bathing suit. Because there were no personal belongings found on the beach, authorities began questioning nearby residents to see if anyone could identify the young woman. When 24-year-old John Paul Anderson, a Polaris Submarine crewman from Massachusetts, returned home from running errands early that evening, he was unable to locate his wife, 20-year-old Brenda Lee Minton Anderson, who lived with him on Folly Beach. That’s when neighbors told him about the woman who had been found on the beach and he was able…