In the Black at Binding Time

The disreputable contingent: ye old scary dude
with author/moviemaker James Wayland

Binding Time Café and Bookstore's 2014 Book Festival opened at 10:00 this morning to a fairly small crowd, but over the next couple of hours, business picked up with a steady flow of patrons coming and going, most leaving with a new book or several in hand. The majority of the authors in attendance brought works of local, regional, and general literary interest, but local writer and moviemaker James Wayland, author of Trailer Park Vampires and Dirty Southside Jam — not to mention writer/producer/director of the recent indie movie, Never Look Back Again — and I made for a shuddersome, thoroughly disreputable horror contingent. My table was set up next to Dr. Mary Helen Hensley, who has written a series of autobiographical volumes known as The Promised Trilogy (Promised, Circles of Light, and The Land Beyond the River), which details her near-death experience after a car accident in the 1991 as well as a children's book titled The Chakra Fairies. Her late father, Dick Hensley, was principal of Martinsville High School as well as head football coach when I was a student there (not quite a full half century ago). A few years back, Mary Helen published a little volume of her father's memorable sayings and wisdom, which range from entertaining to profound.

For a small town that fell into economic depression twenty-some years ago and has suffered seriously ever since, Martinsville, VA, does manage to retain an inviting, eclectic culture that has attracted and kept lots of creative individuals and small businesses reminiscent of its richer days in decades past. Binding Time proprietors John and Bonnie Hale do a bang-up job putting together these regular book festivals — and any time I attend such an event and leave in the black, then it's been a pretty good day. Like today.

Read, eat, drink, and be merry.

Authors and book dealers, start your engines!

Dr. Mary Helen Hensley, author of The Promised trilogy, The Chakra Fairies, and others.

Author Michael Howlett, channeling Mark Twain, with Binding Time proprietor John Hale