I survived a lovely week in Dayton. The shorthand of what I was doing was attending a class on administering our international officer programs. In the evenings, I graded about half of the 77 papers I collected from our current group the Friday afternoon before I left. I still have the other half to grade.

I also managed to read a book (that process has slowed down lately now that I’m pushing back toward writing). I picked it up at the local book fair a couple weeks ago. The author is from South Carolina, but his publisher is local, so he was in town for one of the panels I listened to, and he read from the beginning of the book. I loved the premise, so I stopped at the local independent bookstore tent outside and picked up a copy. Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston by Charlie Greer. As long as I overlooked the obvious (to me) logistical issues of the story, I was able to enjoy it. The author took on long-standing prejudices and used them to develop the story. He made liberal use of stereotypes to feed the story and advance his point. This is a first published novel. It’s good enough I’d read his second–whenever that might appear. River City Publishing has featured Outbound — click the link to read more about it and the author.