From peanut farm to novels, author Cassandra King finds joy in writing

Cassandra King remembers when she started writing. She was a student at Pinckard Elementary School.

“I would write stories, mostly ghost stories because my grandfather’s house was said to be haunted,” King said. “I learned if I read just a chapter to my friends at recess, I could get them to want to know the next day what would happen next.”

The young entrepreneur would read a chapter in exchange for a popsicle.

Years later, King would have her first novel published by a small press in Montgomery. “Making Waves in Zion” hit book shelves in 1995. She eventually signed on with Hyperion of New York, which released her second novel, “The Sunday Wife,” in 2002 and her third novel, “The Same Sweet Girls,” in 2005. The publisher also reissued her first novel as “Making Waves” in 2004. “Queen of Broken Hearts” was released in 2007 and her latest novel, “Bridal Falls,” is set for release in 2010.

Both “Sunday Wife” and “Same Sweet Girls” received accolades and topped readers’ choice and book lists and were nominated book of the year by the Southeastern Booksellers Association.

It’s been a long road since the daughter of a peanut farmer recited ghost stories on the playground.

“Writing has always been a passion,” she said.

The Wiregrass native is coming home next week to make appearances for the Houston-Love Memorial Library’s Friends of the Library organization. King will speak during a luncheon on Nov. 4 at the Dothan Country Club at noon. Tickets for the luncheon are $20 and available at the Houston-Love Memorial Library or by calling 793-9767.

The author will sign copies of her books during a wine tasting from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Vino Vino Marketplace. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased the day of the wine tasting at Vino Vino, located at 2620 Montgomery Highway in the Crepe Myrtle shopping center.

All proceeds from the events benefit the Friends of the Library.

King wanted to be a playwright when she started out and even had a few plays produced. But it was a poem that earned her her first dollar as a writer. King had written a number of short stories and articles in magazines, anthologies and literary journals. She taught English and creative writing at the University of Montevallo — her college alma mater then known as Alabama College — as well as Jefferson State and Gadsden State.

She married a preacher right out of college — a marriage that later ended.

In 1998, she married novelist Pat Conroy, who she had met a few years earlier at a reception in Birmingham. She’s lived in South Carolina ever since. King returns home for visits — her sister and 94-year-old father still live in the area. But she’s thrilled to be coming home to talk about her work.

“It’s really exciting to be back after all these years in the place where I was born and raised,” King said. “It’s home; it’s what I consider home.”

Her novel “The Same Sweet Girls” was inspired by a group of friends from her college days. The women gather each year for a reunion and have been doing so since they graduated in 1967. But King said places inspire her as a writer. Her novels have been set in towns based on Fairhope and DeFuniak Springs and Grayton Beach in Florida.

“I am inspired by place,” she said. “I feel like that in each of my novels that the place where they’re set is almost a character in the book.”

With two novelists under one roof, King said they will read each other’s work as it’s completed, but the actual writing is a solitary endeavor for each of them — a style they both prefer. To this day, writing is a joy for King. And that joy, she said, is what makes a writer successful.

“I always told my students, they didn’t always have to write to have a wide audience or have a bestseller,” King said. “You can write for your own enjoyment, write your family’s story. Don’t think of it as an all-or-nothing deal. Write for the pleasure of writing.”