The Charlotte-based author shares how she got into writing and the inspiration for the two books she’ll release this spring
As told to Ayn-Monique Klahre

Joy Callaway is the Charlotte-based author of seven novels, including the historical fiction book The Star of Camp Greene, which is coming out this May, and the romance Sing Me Home to Carolina, which will come out this June. On May 14, WALTER will be hosting her in conversation with Kristy Woodson Harvey at Maywood Hall for our Book Club series. We hopped on the phone to learn about how Callaway got into writing, her process, and what she loves about her newest books.

How did you get into writing?

I tell this story all the time, but it’s just the truth: growing up, my parents only allowed us to watch 30 minutes of TV a week. For me, it was TGIF. And we weren’t allowed to say we were bored or we got chores, so my brother and I found ways to occupy ourselves. I was always a voracious reader and I would write plays and music, and we’d try to involve my friends and neighbors in these productions. Or I’d sell magazines door-to-door. And growing up, my parents also read us the classics out loud, books like Little Women and The Secret Garden. My mom was a teacher, so she reminded us these books are not only good storytelling, but they help with your vocabulary and make you a better writer. But when you think about it, the classics are sort of historical fiction, because they’re written in their time. So when I look back, I think that’s what led me to writing historical fiction. 

But I didn’t do creative writing very intentionally through high school or college, though I was always good at writing. I started out in print journalism, then ended up going to grad school for PR and got a masters in mass communication from South Carolina. I worked in PR for a golf and real estate company after college, then as the marketing director for a financial company. 

Then the summer after my husband and I got married, I found myself reading a lot more than usual, and I remember looking at my bookshelf one day and remembering how much I loved creative writing. And I was like, you know, I think I want to write a book. So I did!

And did that immediately land you a book deal?

No! The first book was a dual timeline historical novel, but it was two books too long and I made all sorts of horrible mistakes. So I wrote a couple more practice novels, trying out different genres. With writing, they always tell you to write what you know versus what’s trendy, and I wasn’t doing that, I was trying out different genres — like a more Nicolas Sparks type romance, and a speculative fiction about what would happen if the electric grid went out. But they weren’t quite right. 

Then one Christmas, I was at my grandma’s house, and she and my grandpa are the keepers of the family stories. And she told me about some portraits on the wall of artists living in the Bronx in the Gilded Age, and they were my great great grandma and her siblings. And I was like, why have I never written about them? And that story became my debut novel, The Fifth Avenue Artist Society. And the rest is history!

So how many books have you written at this point?

It depends if you count published or unpublished. I wrote The Fifth Avenue Artist Society and Secret Sisters, then two or three other manuscripts that were sort of transition books for me. They didn’t get published nor would I want them in my repertoire, but they were good for me. Then I wrote the Grand Design, which was about Dorothy Draper at the Greenbrier, and that was the first in a The Star of Camp Greene is the fourth. So I’ve published six historical fiction books, and Sing Me Home to Carolina is my debut contemporary romance.

How’s your writing process different for these different book genres?

They’re very different! So with historical fiction, there is a ton of pressure to get the facts right, to do the research and make sure I’ve really got it set in the story. So for The Star of Camp Greene, I already knew about Charlotte’s Camp Greene and had been interested in it for a while. But to research it, I went into newspaper archives to find any mention of it, I visited the archives of the Charlotte Mecklenburg library and looked at pictures and such. So I probably spend four to five months just researching, then plotting the book, before I even start writing. And then as I’m writing, I’ll have to stop to figure something out, like, there’s a road mentioned in this one newspaper article, but I don’t see it on the map. So I’ll have to go to the archivist at the library to see if they know where it is. Or, the army job titles have changed in the last 100 years, so I’ll have to talk to the JAG historian and make sure I’m getting it right.

For Sing Me Home to Carolina, the process was totally different. I was just creating a town I wanted to live in, inspired by a barn party my mom and I went to in a small town in West Virginia. That book was based more on the sort of entertainment I like to consume, like the TV shows and books I gravitate toward that make me laugh. So I still plot out the books, but it’s fully fictional, so it takes the pressure off. I could just sit down and draft every day. And it was pure fun, it just poured out of me, I was laughing as I wrote it.

But it’s funny, I’ve had advance readers who read both books back-to-back, and they say they can’t believe I wrote both of them.

What do you want readers to get out of these books?

You know, one of the early readers in a book group told me that reading Sing Me Home to Carolina felt like a vacation, like having a little cake — and I’m like, yes, this story filled with romance and quirky small-town antics is meant to be fun! We all have so much going on in our lives, this can just be a little treat, a fun break from real life. With my historical fiction, I always start with some forgotten piece of history that I want to shine a light on, but also, at the end of the day, I want people to leave my books with a sense of hope. I want to share pieces of history that have been forgotten — and to brighten someone’s day, too.