The 16^th Annual South Carolina Book Festival will be held on Saturday, May 19 (10am – 5pm) – Sunday, May 20 (12pm – 4pm), 2012 at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center on 1101 Lincoln Street in Columbia. It is the biggest literary event in South Carolina. Here are five things you’ll want to do if you go:

1. Meet your favorite authors. How often do you get nearly six dozen authors together in the same place? There will be more than 70 authors attending, including Wendy Wax, Mary Alice Monroe, Pat Conroy, and me! Book presentations will be held in various locations throughout the weekend. In addition to hearing authors talk about their books, you can buy them while at the festival. I think Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million will be the booksellers so bring your membership card if you have one so that you can get discounts on all your purchases. And remember, books make great gifts! Discover new books by new and well-known authors and get your books personally autographed by the author. Exhibit Hall.

***FYI: For anyone interested, I’ll be speaking about Lowcountry folklore (ghosts and boo hags and more) at 2 p.m. on Saturday.***

1. Check out the cool exhibits. There will be 90 exhibitors including book dealers, publishers, antiquarians, writers groups, and more. Exhibit Hall. The Antiquarian Book Dealers Association of South Carolina will host a three-day appraisal fair. For $10, you can get up to three books appraised.
2. Spend a fun day with your kids or grandkids. There’s lots for them to enjoy. Check out the Children’s Pavilion featuring authors, storytellers, performances, and a summer reading station sponsored by Books-A-Million. Congaree Room. You can also opt to go on a Field Trip. On Friday, May 18, 2012, pre-selected second grade students will enjoy a morning with children’s authors
   featured at the SCBook Festival, including Kwame Alexander, Melissa Conroy, and Dinah Johnson. USC mascot Cocky and his student volunteers will greet the pre-selected second graders and present them with a small remembrance of their visit with the authors. This event is sponsored by the South Carolina Center for Children’s Books and Literacy of the University of South Carolina School of Library and Information Science and the SCBook Festival
3. Live and learn! Take a writing class. Master writing classes are taking place on Friday, May 18, such as “How to Get Published” and “Children’s Writing.” $.
4. Come to PARTY. Who doesn’t like a good party? The Opening Night Reception will be held on Friday, May 18, 7:00 – 10:00 p.m. at the Ernest F. Hollings Special Collections Library, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina, 1322 Greene Street. This annual event to kick-off the SCBook Festival is a reception with heavy hors d’oeuvres and bar, featuring SCBook Festival authors and presenters mingling alongside book enthusiasts. $. I plan to attend this awesome event and hope you will too. If you can’t make it or you just love to party, there’s another event: The Literary Vine on Saturday, May 19, 2010, 7:30 – 9:30 p.m. at the Richland County Public Library, 1431 Assembly Street, downtown Columbia. Friends of the Richland County Public Library (RCPL) invites you to join them for an evening of wine, music and food to help raise funds for library programming.  Several SCBook Festival authors participating in the event.$.

For more information or to buy tickets, visit www.scbookfestival.org

Penguin Plunge opens at 9 a.m. May 12!

Penguins waddle into the spotlight May 12 at the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores. A 9 a.m. ribbon-cutting officially opens the visiting Penguin Plunge exhibit. Special guests expected include Splash, the Aquarium’s penguin mascot, and Big Splash, a 30-foot inflatable penguin. Black and white is the theme of the day, with penguinistic activities, decor and treats.

Katie Campbell assists Aquarium Director Allen Monroe with ribbon-cutting.  Katie, age 7, landed a role in the ceremony by dressing as a penguin for the Aquarium’s “Pre-Penguin Party” announcing the exhibit in March. All kids that dressed for that occasion could enter a drawing for ribbon-cutting privileges.

Visitors of all ages are urged to suit up in similar fashion on May 12. Any kind of penguin attire – costume, tuxedo, black and white garb – throughout the day earns an entry blank for a drawing. The grand prize – a “colony” of four plush penguins from the Aquarium Gift Shop and other penguinistic prizes.

Opening day activities and viewing Penguin Plunge are free with admission or membership.

For more information, visit www.ncaquariums.com/pine-knoll-shores

(1) The SCBook Festival 

The 16th Annual SCBook Festival will take place May 18 – 20, 2012 at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center in downtown Columbia, SC. Saturday, May 19 and Sunday, May 20 are FREE and open to the public. Special ticketed events start on Friday, May 18 and take place throughout the weekend, including writers workshops and wine parties. The SCBook Festival features more than 80 authors (such as Pat Conroy, Mary Alice Monroe, and me) in solo and panel presentations, more than 70 exhibitors selling books and book-related merchandise, book signings, and much more. I’ll post a reminder and more on specific events as the festival gets closer. I’m looking forward to it and hope to see you there! For more information about the 2012 SCBook Festival, visit the website:  www.scbookfestival.org

(2)COUNTDOWN…

I’m excited to announce that the first of a five-book series will be published in five days. I loved researching and writing A Ghost Hunter’s Guide to The Most Haunted Places in America. It discusses the fifteeen MOST haunted places in our country. Histories, investigations, photographs, fun facts, and visitor information is included. In honor of the release of this book, I’ll be posting trivia questions over the next couple of weeks (starting the middle of this week) to test your ghostly knowledge.

(3) SUMMER TRAVEL. 

It’s less than four weeks until Memorial Day. You know what that means. Summer travel planning time! Soon I’ll start posting lots of travel news, tips, and deals, including important information for those traveling to London for the Summer Olympics. In the meantime, you may want to visit www.terrancezepke.com to find FREE travel reports on everything from Disney to national park vacations.

I just finished reading a remarkable book called The Day After Roswell. It was written by Colonel Philip J. Corso (Ret) with William J. Birnes. Corso is well qualified to write this story as he is a former Pentagon official, a bronze star recipient with an impressive military career that includes spending years analyzing the recovered spacecraft and artifacts from the crash. Corso was the Chief of the Army’s Foreign Technology Division and a member of President Eisenhower’s National Security Council. This book was written based on his first-hand involvement, eyewitness reports, and declassified documents. Corso blows the lid off a sixty-five-year-old government cover up. Read on if you want to know more about what really happened at Roswell…

Part I. The Crash

On July 4, 1947, Army Counterintelligence picked up strange activity during their nightly monitoring of the area near the top secret military installation. They realized that whatever aircraft had been in the area had crashed. Since this was the height of the Cold War between the U.S. and Russia, they were sure it was Russian aircraft that had gone down. Military was dispatched immediately with instructions to keep civilians away from the site. When the men got there, they discovered it was not the Russians who had crashed but aliens.

This happened just after Orsen Welles’s ‘War of the Worlds’. Government feared that the public couldn’t handle knowing about the alien invasion, so the cover-up plan was hatched. The military turned away local first responders and everyone else, refusing to give any information other than “national security.” They retrieved every single piece of debris they could find and the spacecraft and aliens and hauled it all back to the base.

But a few people, including a local fireman and civilian contractor, got a close up look during the initial chaos. They were soon warned to forget about what they had seen if they knew what was good for them. The military would have denied any incident happened at all, no doubt, except that there were campers, local ranchers, Indian artifact hunters, and local authorities who had witnessed the crash.

Those who got close enough say that the aircraft was not in a million pieces but appeared to be nominally damaged—and that it didn’t look like an airplane but more like a flying saucer or disc. Those who got a good look at the aliens say that all seemed to be dead and were being put into body bags but there was one that was alive but appeared to be dying. He was described as no bigger than a child with an over-sized balloon-shaped head with large, dark eyes that set apart from each other on a downward slope. The nose and mouth were especially tiny, almost like slits. The body was grayish-brown and completely hairless. The alien seemed to be in a lot of pain, but did not make any sounds.

Part II. The Cover Up

The flying saucer story was released by the 509^th base commander, Bull Blanchard. General Roger Ramey forced a retraction as soon as the story went public. The Army made Major Jesse Marcel admit that he had made a mistake, that they had not been a flying saucer but only a weather balloon. They even made him pose with balloon debris they had staged to add credibility to their cover-up story. Marcel recanted this lame story upon his deathbed, saying that the first report about an alien aircraft was true.

Mac Brazel retrieved some pieces of the aircraft he found on his property before the military arrived. When they found out, they threatened him and seized the items. The recovered items and aliens were quickly shipped out of Roswell. They were sent to the 8^th Army Air Force Base in Fort Bliss, TX; Wright Airfield in Ohio; and Fort Riley, Kansas.

Corso was a major stationed at Fort Riley and this is when his involvement with Roswell began. On the night of July 6, 1947, a sentry approached him with a disturbing report. He said the Corso had to come see what he had just seen. Curiosity got the better of the intelligence officer and he followed the young man, who opened a crate to reveal a coffin filled with some of glowing liquid and an alien submerged inside.

As soon as he saw the alien encased in the strange coffin, he knew he better forget what he had seen. He advised the sentry to do the same. But that was just the beginning of his association with the Roswell project.

General Trudeau gave Corso “the package,” which was the code name for the crash artifacts and reports. He explained that it was top secret, that no one could know but those he needed on his team. Corso and his team of scientists spent a long time evaluating the valuable technology that had fallen out of the sky and into the army’s lap.

Scientists never got the answer to some questions, such as how the aliens disposed of their waste. There was no bathroom or comparable facility on board the spacecraft. The research and development team was astonished with most things associated with the aliens. It was all beyond anything the U.S. was familiar with at that time, such as fiber optics and supertancity fibers. If they could figure some of it out, it could go a long way in furthering the U.S. weapons systems, including missile technology.

That information is classified and unavailable, as well as anything else about extraterrestrial existence. But we can be certain that there have been more alien encounters since 1947 and that our government is still not telling us…

Airfares are going up due to high fuel costs and supply and demand. While most airlines have cut many flights, demand for business and leisure travel continues to rise.

So what are summer travelers looking for the best airfare deals supposed to  do?

It depends on when you’re traveling. If you’re looking to go somewhere this spring or early summer, you definitely need to buy ASAP.

But if you won’t be traveling until July or August, it is best to wait a little longer. The reason being that many airlines won’t release their cheapest fares until at least mid-to-late June.

That said, the exception is European travel. It is anticipated that flights to Europe will be at full or near full capacity this summer, which means there won’t be many deals offered. As is often the case with Europe, booking sooner rather than later is usually best.

Keep in mind that the summer Olympics will be held in London, England in July, so airfares will be high and hard to get (so will hotel rooms and train tickets).

I’ll be writing a blog about everything you need to know about traveling to London this summer, so be sure to check back next month to read all about it.

According to ABC News, A New Jersey couple is suing their landlord for a refund after they said paranormal activity caused them to flee their rental home.

Michele Callan and her fiance, Josue Chinchilla, moved into the home in Toms River, N.J., with Callan’s two children on March 1 and were immediately spooked.

“Three taps on the TV, taps on the shoulder…” Chinchilla told ABC News.

At first they chalked it up to the adjustment period of moving into a new home.

But things only got spookier, they said.

Doors opened and closed. The family even claimed they recorded strange voices whispering, “Let it burn.”

The new tenants said that between the menacing voices, flickering lights and clothes mysteriously flying from their closets, they couldn’t take it anymore. They fled the three-bedroom home and checked into a hotel, where they said they have been living since March 13.

Callan and Chinchilla filed suit last week in New Jersey Superior Court, seeking the return of their $2,250 security deposit from their landlord, Richard Lopez.

Lopez filed a counter-suit claiming the couple is using alleged paranormal activity as a way to break their lease.

“Frankly, there is something else going on,” David Semanchik, who is Lopez’s lawyer, told the Asbury Park Press. “She is a single mom, she has this fiancé living with her. I think she is in over her head and she can’t afford the rent.”

The couple said that isn’t the case, but ultimately a judge will have the final word on whether the family will be able to escape their alleged nightmare on Lowell Avenue.

I thought it might be ‘fun’ to address how and when taxes began.

The first documented system of taxation began 6,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Livestock, boats, and a ‘burden’ tax were required to be paid. A burden tax was imposed on every man and had to be paid in the form of labor or military service.

Egyptian pharaohs required their servants to pay twice a year sometime around 3,000 B.C.

The French government began taxing wine in the 18th century, including taxes on the vine, taxes on the harvest, taxes on the manufacturer, taxes on the transport, and taxes on the sale of wine.

And for us it began in 1913 when Congress started taxing high-income earners. Anyone who made more than $3,000 ($4,000 for couples) was required to pay 1%. The percentage increased to 7% for anyone who had an income of $500,000 or more. This went so well they decided to tax everyone but the indigent.

It seems there has always been a need to generate revenue, such as for public works and to finance wars. Here are some examples:

Candle tax: Candlemakers during Colonial times were required to pay taxes on every single candle made. Defective or broken candles had to be destroyed in front of a tax official or taxes had to be paid on them.

Hearth tax: In England, the Crown expected its citizens to pay a hearth tax on all the fireplaces in a home. This led to the elimination of fireplaces in many rooms to avoid this tax.

Window tax: This replaced the hearth tax, which required time-consuming home inspections to count fireplaces. Homeowners were expected to pay a tax on every window in their home.  This led to fewer windows being built, hidden windows, and windows being boarded up.

Beard tax: Russian Czar Peter the Great instigated this tax to discourage men from growing beards. He wanted the male citizens to look clean cut. Those who chose to sport a beard had to pay a tax and wear a big medallion as proof they had paid their tax.

***Don’t forget, taxes must be postmarked by midnight on Monday, April 16!***

The Top Five Children’s Books of All Time…

(according to Scholastic Parent and Child)

Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)

Goodnight Moon (Margaret Wise Brown)

A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L’Engle)

The Snowy Day (Ezra Jacks Keats)

Where the Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendak)

The Top Five-Selling Books of All Time…

(according to Wikipedia and since sales figures were recorded)

A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens) 200 million copies sold

 The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) 200 million copies sold

The Hobbit (J.R. Tolkein) 150 million copies sold

And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie) 100 million copies sold

Dream of the Red Chamber (Cao Xueqin) 100 million copies sold

Five Weird Writers’ Habits…

Ernest Hemingway wrote The Old Man and The Sea standing up in front of the typewriter. He wrote from dawn to noon and then spent the rest of the day drinking at his favorite bars.

To the contrary, Truman Capote could only write when he was horizontal. He wrote in bed or while sprawled on the couch with a cigarette and coffee during the day and a cigarette and martini at night.

TV writer Aaron Sorkin always reads what he has written aloud using different voices and poses while looking at himself in the mirror. If it doesn’t sound right, he rewrites it.

Victor Hugo wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables in the nude. He made his valet hide his clothes so that the procrastinator wouldn’t be tempted to stop writing and leave his house.

Some authors hide out in hotels to accomplish serious writing. Maya Angelou, author of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, checks into a hotel early in the morning to get a dozen pages done before late afternoon, when she checks out. She writes in long-hand and demands that all distracting items, such as televisions and telephones, be removed from her room.

Top Five Banned Books…

The Grapes of Wrath (1939) John Steinbeck

Lolita (1955) Vladimir Nobokov

Slaughterhouse (1969) Kurt Vonnieut

The Satanic Verses (1988) Salman Rushie

American Psycho (1991) Brett Eason Ellis

What about the  latest trends: digital publishing & eBooks?

The sales statistics I have found are too contradictory to include. I did, however, find this interesting factoid provided by The Association of American Publishers:

E-book Sales Continue to Break Records with +164.4 Percent Gains for 2010

Given that 6 million Kindle Fires were sold during the fourth quarter of 2011, when available the latest figures will be much higher! And this doesn’t include other e-reader devices or even other Kindle models!

Into food and wine? Then you need to make plans to attend this fun event. The Eighth Annual Beaufort Wine & Food Weekend will be held April 25 – 29 in Beaufort, North Carolina. There are lots of special events to choose from, but a few are already sold out. Ticket cost depends on the event, ranging from free to $95 for gourmet wine dinners. It is one of the largest outdoor wine festivals in the state, but winemakers come from as far as Sonoma, California. And this years promises to be spectacular with an A-list of chefs participating.

One of the chefs participating this year is Chef/Owner Scott Howell of Nana’s in Durham. Nana’s is ranked as one of the top twenty best organic restaurants in America and  has won Wine Spectator’s “Award of Excellence” for its wine menu. But I’m especially excited about Chef Nathan Thurston. He is the top chef at one of my favorite restaurants, Ocean Room at The Sanctuary Resort on Kiawah Island. I know firsthand why he’s won numerous American Culinary Federation competitions.

There will be lots of special events, such as wine and cheese tastings with live music, seminars, wine dinners, a contest for the best bartender concoction, and cooking demonstrations. If you’d rather have a cold beer than a glass of Riesling, then plan to attend on Saturday, April 28. There will be barbeque from a couple of top pit masters and some great beer breweries, such as Sierra Nevada and Natty Greene Brewing Company, will be featured.

The event is a fundraiser for the Beaufort Historical Association and the NC Maritime Museum at Beaufort. So, be sure to drink and eat lots in the name of charity!

For more information, visit http://beaufortwineandfood.com

Wanna be among the first to hear about my latest projects and related information?

You’re at the right place! I am so excited about this new, interactive online community

I hope you’ll check in regularly to see my latest posts. I will be submitting lots of fun and useful information, such as travel reports, travel tips and advice, and secrets to achieving “gourmet travel on a fast food budget.” And, I’ll bring you the latest on piracy, reveal haunted places and ghostly events you won’t want to miss, and share what’s happening along our coast. Plus, you’ll be the first to learn about my latest book projects.

I often get asked how I got into writing about such diverse subjects. That’s simple. You should write about what interests you and what you know about. I have always been fascinated with piracy and pirates, such as Blackbeard and Anne Bonny; lowcountry legends, “hoodoo,” and folklore; haunted places and ghosts; strange phenomenon, such as UFOs and crop circles; and anything relating to travel. It’s not for everyone, but I like chasing ghosts, searching for pirates, and traveling to remote and exotic places around the world. Check back often or subscribe to my posts if you’d like to learn more about these subjects.

The blogs have been segregated so that you can pick what interests you: Nautical News or Ghostly Postings or Terrance Talks Travel–or all three! Also, under each category, there is more information on these subjects, such as important travel planning websites and what pirates really considered treasure to be. I’ll be adding content on a regular basis so as to keep you updated.

Want to know more?  Click here for a Q & A with me.

A Few of My Favorite Quotes:

“To Fail Is To Give Up. But You Are In The Midst of a Moving Process. Nothing Fails Then.”

Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

“The World is a Book. If You Do Not Travel, You Read Only One Page.”

St. Augustine

“When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m even better.”

Mae West

“Never give in, never, never, never–in nothing, great or small, large or petty–never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.”

Sir Winston Spencer Churchill

A journey is a person in itself, no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policies and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

John Steinbeck

To dine with a glacier on a sunny day is a glorious thing and makes feasts of meat and wine ridiculous. The glacier eats hills drinks sun beams.

John Muir