In Deadline, young Nashville Times reporter Matt Harper begins investigating a decades-old civil rights murder, risking his life against forces that want to keep the truth hidden. Author Mark Ethridge’s novel Grievances is based on true events, and borrows heavily from Ethridge’s long career as a reporter and editor.

Pat Conroy called Grievances “as riveting as the best Grisham courtroom thriller … [with] heart that will resonate with readers long after they have turned the final page.”

Watch the Deadline trailer on YouTube or learn more about the film at DeadLineFilm.com.

Grievances, by Mark Ethridge, is available in hardcover and ebook formats from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite book retailer, and on all major ebook platforms.

Director Curt Hahn expects to shoot most of the film in Tennessee, using financial incentives created by the state to bring in more film crews. As reported by The Tennessean in the article "Nashville gets another taste of Hollywood" about the film, Hahn expected to recruit most of the film’s actors from the West Coast, but found a wealth of talent in Tennessee, and most of the film’s actors hail from the area.

Many of Deadline’s newsroom scenes will be shot at The Tennessean, and a video on the newspaper’s website site interviews Ethridge and Executive Producer Hunter Atkins. Regarding a scene that takes place amidst the presses in the Tennessean’s basement, Atkins notes that Deadline shows "kind a view of the newspaper that people really don’t get to see very often in movies [and] we think that makes it unusual."

Ethridge, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, first reported the story of the civil rights murder when he worked at the Charlotte Observer in the 1970s and 1980s. Ethridge told the Tennesean that the book and movie are "really a movie about how one person can make a difference." Pat Conroy called Grievances "a beautifully written, compelling tale of race and redemption … one of the most deeply satisfying novels I have read in a long, long time."

Learn more about Deadline at the movie’s official website, DeadlineFilm.com. You can read more about filming at the Tennessean and watch a video interview with Mark Ethridge at their website.

Grievances is available direct from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com or your favorite local or online bookstore.

In a VCU article, Judy VanSlyke Turk, Director of the School of Mass Communications at VCU, described Mark as a “perfect choice because of his connection to Richmond and professor Turpin.” The annual Turpin Lecture is named in honor of former professor Bill Turpin and, according to Turk, is designed to bring in speakers who are “successful media managers.”

Read VCU’s entire article about Mark’s visit, as well as a report from their Reporting 101 class.

Mark has been the president of Carolina Parenting, Inc. since 1990, and is also the former editor of The Charlotte Observer.  He directed The Charlotte Observer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigations of the textile industry and the PTL scandal involving Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. Mark studied as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and was named a member of Esquire magazine’s inaugural class of “People Under 40 Who Are Changing America.” His work has appeared in newspapers and magazines nationwide.

Grievances tells of journalist Matt Harper’s efforts to reveal the truth behind the twenty-year-old unsolved Civil Rights murder of a thirteen-year-old African-American boy. Grievances is a suspense-filled story of newspapers, murder, and of redemption–for a small Southern town and for Matt Harper. Transcendent, the feature film subsidiary of Film House, recently optioned Grievances for a feature film, and Ethridge is currently working with the company on adapting the screenplay.

Grievances is available from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online book retailer.

Grievances tells the story of an unsolved civil rights murder in South Carolina, and the newspaper investigation with both political and personal repercussions for journalist Matt Harper. “Overall here,” writes Oliver, “Ethridge appears to have found a comfortable sweet spot somewhere between the breakneck urgency of big city journalism and the more measured craft of tension-filled fiction writing.”

The Alabama Writers’ Forum promotes and facilitates the practice of literary arts through its services to writers and the general public. With individual and corporate associates statewide, the Forum represents the diverse voices of today’s writing talent. First Draft magazine’s new online book reviews feature twelve reviews each month of books by Alabama authors, books about our state, and books by local publishing houses. First Draft Reviews Online also includes a searchable archive to benefit readers, students, and scholars.

Grievances ��is �available ��from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online book�� retailer.

Doug Marlette, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and novelist (The Bridge, Magic Time) died this week in a Mississippi car wreck at age 57. He was one of my best friends for thirty-five years.

Our friendship began in 1972 at The Charlotte Observer where I was a rookie reporter and he was the editorial cartoonist, his first real job.

It was a rare, special time. We were young, rebellious, just coming off Kent State and the anti-war movement.¬† (I was still 29 when I got to be The Observer‘s managing editor — seven years after marching in the streets.)

We were crusaders. It’s why we got into the business. Imagine this:

A 16-page special section with no advertising which said North Carolina had a moral obligation to stop being a state where the most valuable cash crop (tobacco) kills people.

10 reporters for eight months on brown lung disease in the textile industry an eight-day series of maybe 32 pages that won a public service Pulitzer.

More than 10 years on PTL . . . and endless reporters, lawyer bills and scorn from the public. And another Pulitzer.

Two reporters and a photographer assigned to find the source of the Catawba River and follow it to the sea, writing about the people and the land along the way. 32 pages. Special paper. No advertising.

Doug was the lightning rod, the lead point on the flying wedge of journalists who so inflamed the publisher and the populace that what the rest of us did looked mild in comparison.

More recently, Doug taught me about writing novels. There are conventions in novel writing, the way there are conventions in writing for a newspaper or writing a legal brief. If you are a reader, you may experience some of these conventions but when you become a writer you find that they have already been intellectualized and that there is a code. (You just didn’t know it.)

I learned many of these rules when I gave Doug the first 185 pages of Grievances when he came to visit at the beach. He disappeared into his room and emerged five or six hours later. He suggested we go down to the dock and that I take something to write with. He proceeded to give me a list of 10 things I needed to know about novel-writing and obviously didn’t — things like ‘Never say or reveal anything important about a character when the character is not on stage.’

I rewrote Grievances as a result

About every six months thereafter I would get a call from Doug. “Do you still have that list?” he would ask. “And would you mind faxing it to me?”

Doug Marlette’s website, including memorial information, is at www.dougmarlette.com.

Grievances is available from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online book retailer.

A week from tonight, I’m the featured speaker at the annual meeting of the Queens University Friends of the Library in Charlotte – another of the many speeches I’ve made to literary groups and at universities since NewSouth Books published Grievances almost a year ago.

This one stands to be a little different.

On May 8, 1974 – thirty three years prior, almost to the day – my grandmother, Willie Snow Ethridge, addressed the same group.

As the Friends of the Library reported in a recent newsletter item, “Willie Snow Ethridge came to Charlotte (from a weekend at the Kentucky Derby) to talk at Queens about her 1973 book, Side By Each. A scrapbook in Everett Library documents her visit as speaker . . . Reporters at both The Charlotte Observer and The Charlotte News found her to be engaging as a person and a writer – part of her grandson’s inheritance from her and other well known writers in his family.”

Being Mark Ethridge III leads people to assume I most closely identify with my newspaper editor father (Raleigh Times, Akron Beacon Journal, Detroit Free Press) or my newspaper publisher grandfather (Louisville Courier-Journal, Newsday) Рespecially since I’ve been both a newspaper publisher and an editor.

But the fact is, I’ve always had as much in common with Willie (that was her given name and that’s what her sixteen grandchildren called her) as I do with the journalists for whom I am named. I especially identify with her love of stories and her humor.

I’ll likely never equal her talent and I’ll certainly never match her output. Willie Snow Ethridge published sixteen books. I’ve published one, although I’m finishing another and plotting a third.

But the newsletter story carries the headline A First For Annual Meeting.

If I didn’t feel any legacy pressure before, I certainly do now.

Grievances is now available from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online book retailer.

In Grievances, Ethridge, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, tells the story of a pair of reporters who set out to solve the decades-old murder of a thirteen-year-year-old boy during racial unrest in rural South Carolina.

To hear the interview, visit the WFAE website and follow the listening instructions.

Grievances is now available from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online book retailer.

For several months I’ve been on a tour for my novel, Grievances, which came out in May. I was excited getting into it but I figured that by now–roughly appearance number 40 of 60 or so–it would become tiresome, repetitive.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. At literally every stop, whether bookstore signing or major presentation, I’ve been surprised and delighted by��meeting new and��old friends, by learning some forgotten family history,��by making the acquaintance of other writers, or by just hearing other people’s stories.

An example occurred recently outside of Chapel Hill.

I’d arrived a little early for my talk and signing at McIntyre’s Bookshop and decided to drive by my late grandparents’ spectacular home and grounds overlooking the Rocky River south of town. The roads had changed��since I’d been there last, more than 20 years before, after my grandparents, Mark and Willie Snow Ethridge, had died. Thankfully, my grandmother’s huge but delicate Japanese gate still��made��the entrance unmistakable. I couldn’t resist driving up the long, wooded driveway.

The house was just as it had been when they had lived there. I could see through the floor-to-ceiling glass walls that a grand piano sat right where my grandmother’s had decades before. I decided to knock on the door.

After apologizing for interrupting, I was warmly greeted by a very nice man named Dr. Fred Sparling and his��lovely wife ��Joyce who had owned the house for many years. They knew exactly who I was, still referred to the house as “The Ethridge House” and, in fact had collected stories about my grandparents and the famous visitors they welcomed to the home. Mrs. Sparling even had a shelf of the books written by my grandmother.

We enjoyed a brief but wonderful visit as they showed me the house and we shared stories. I mentioned I hoped the book event wouldn’t last too long because I wanted to get home to listen to football on the Internet.

“What team?” he asked.

“Princeton. My son ��is the class of 2010 and ��plays defensive tackle.”

He stuck out his hand. “Class of 1958.”

Forty-five minutes later, the Sparlings showed up at my book signing. We plan to get together again soon.

Author Mark Ethridge is himself a Class of 1971 graduate from Princeton. His book, Grievances,�� is now�� available�� from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online book��retailer.

Published by NewSouth Books,¬†“Grievances” came out earlier this year. At ImaginOn: The Joe & Joan Martin Center, Ethridge said his goal was to create a page-turner that took readers inside a newsroom. He said that at one point during the writing, his friend and fellow author, Doug Marlette, gave him a list of story-telling tips: Adverbs are not your friend. A narrator can’t know what he doesn’t know. And: “The world’s supply of semicolons is limited and not very many were allocated to me.”

Read the full article at the Charlotte Observer.

Grievances is now available from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online book retailer.

Grievances is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon, or your favorite local or online book retailer.