The Carenens Team Up for Oct. 5 Meeting

John and Rowe Carenen are the dual guest speakers for the October 5 meeting of the Upstate SC Chapter of Sisters in Crime. The father and daughter are teaming up to discuss the marketing demands authors face once they finish a novel. Writing THE END on a manuscript, whether it’s a debut novel or a writer’s tenth book, marks the start of marketing the author’s work and attempting to gain traction in a crowded, ever-changing marketplace.

 John Carenen, a professor who recently retired from Newberry College’s English Department, has written four novels. When his first novel debuted, his daughter, Rowe, offered to help him market it. That experience led Rowe to create the Book Concierge, a firm that supports writers from all over the world who are at various stages of the writing/publishing/promoting processes.

The monthly Upstate SC SinC meeting is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 5, at The Runway Café, 21 Airport Rd, Greenville, S.C.  Be there at 6:15 p.m. to meet the Carenens and enjoy chapter fellowship. Supper should be served at 6:30. The Carenens’ talk will begin after new and old business at about 7 p.m. Both dinner and the meeting are open to the public. 

In order for the Runway Café to speed service, dinner orders must be emailed by noon the day of the meeting. If you can't dine with us, we would still like to know you plan to attend so we can be sure you have a seat. If possible, please join us for dinner as our dinner orders help to ensure we can book our meeting room for free. To see the special menu for our group, click on the Advance Order Menu tab at right.  Please e-mail your order to Ellis Vidler at ellisvidler1@gmail.com.

If you place an order and do not attend or fail to cancel by noon, you will be charged for the meal. And like always, we'll enjoy it.

Want to know more about the Carenens. Here’s how they describe themselves:

John Carenen, a native Iowan, graduated with an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers Workshop, surprising everyone who knew him, especially high school teachers who saw him as shiftless, pointless, and a bit dim. He continues to write. His work has appeared in popular periodicals, and he has been a featured columnist in newspapers in the Carolinas. His debut novel, Signs of Struggle, was published in 2012, the sequel, A Far Gone Night in 2014, and the third in the Thomas O'Shea series, The Face on the Other Side, will be published before Christmas. He is hard at work, more or less, on novel #4 in the Thomas O'Shea series. 

Rowe Carenen is a graduate of Salem College and the University of Southern Mississippi. When asked, she'd say that poetry has been her passion ever since she realized that words could convey more than just the facts. Her poems have appeared in various literary journals and magazines, including The Revenant Culture and GERM, and her first collection, In the Meantime, was published by Neverland Publishing in September 2014.  Her second collection, Bring Out The Bonebreakers, should be out early 2018. She is currently living in Greenville, and while she agrees that pumpkin spice is pretty great, she prefers gingerbread in her chai lattes.