March 8, 2026

Hello from Raleigh where I’m in the editing stage of the first book in my Southport Sundries Series, Drift. This month’s Notes from the Dock offers a brief sketch of Lois Mercer and an introduction to The Historic Lumina Pavilion in Wrightsville Beach, a place that lingers at the edges of the story and draws my characters back more than once.

Meet Lois

“There’s a marked difference between acquaintances and friends. Most people really don’t become friends. They become deep and serious acquaintances. But in a friendship, you get to know the spirit of another person.” Maya Angelou

Some characters arrive on the page with a whisper. Lois Mercer arrives spouting three thoughts at once. She has the kind of energy that can read as flighty until you look closer. She brings light, levity, and candor. She is effusive. She dives in headfirst. She talks fast. She feels big. Underneath all of that is an enormous heart, and underneath that heart is loneliness.

Wilmington-raised and quick to marry Billy Mercer after he swept her off her feet at a Lumina Pavilion dance, Lois fell for Southport’s golden boy long before she understood what loving him would cost. When they first met, she was certain he must be a fisherman because it was all he ever talked about. Her mother warned her about moving to a small town, but Lois was sure Billy would be enough, and that if the town loved him, it would open its arms to her too. She arrived on the rumor mill’s back—steady gossip disguised as prayer chains—enviable, misread, underestimated, and kept just outside every social circle on purpose. She has spent five years inviting herself to events, signing herself up for committees but never being told when the meetings are, and hosting parties no one else wants to throw. By the time Cordelia arrives, Lois has decided to sit out the stupid social dance. She is tired of waiting for someone to save her a place.

Her mother insists she throw the newly arrived Lowells a welcome party. Beneath her internal insistence that this is her last social hurrah (after this event she’ll stick to home and garden) her pragmatism just can’t seem to tamp out Lois’s hope that this new neighbor’s arrival might be the friend she’s waited for.

Lois is bright and worried in the same breath. She is generous, nosy in the way love sometimes is, funny without trying to be, and wiser than most people give her credit for.

What I love most about Lois is that in spite of all her whirl, she is guileless. She never lets go of her optimism, which is good, because she will need it.

From the moment she appears at Cordelia’s door for their first kitchen table breakfast summit—dressed in one of her best church dresses at 7:30am on a Monday, baby on her hip, with a fistful of swamp sunflowers and her heart in hand—you know she’s the kind of character who will make you laugh on one page and break your heart on another.

Lois-ism: “She’s not asking out of concern, Cordelia. She’s looking for something she can repeat.”

The Lumina Pavilion, Wrightsville Beach, NC

For decades, The Lumina Pavilion was one of coastal North Carolina’s most beloved gathering places. Built in 1905 by Hugh MacRae for the Tidewater Light and Power Company, the grand three-story, 25,000-square-foot structure was designed to draw visitors to Wrightsville Beach by trolley and introduce them to the wonder of electric light. Glowing with more than a thousand incandescent bulbs, the Lumina became a landmark beacon as well as a destination, with its sweeping dance hall, third-floor promenade, bowling alley, and even movies shown on a giant screen out in the surf. In its heyday, especially through the 1930s and 1940s, it welcomed legendary musicians including Count Basie, Billie Holiday, and Duke Ellington, serving as both a social hub and a soundtrack to generations of summer evenings. Though it declined in later years and was demolished in 1973, the Lumina remains woven into the memory and mythology of the North Carolina coast.

Link to Wilmington Star News Online for more historic Lumina Pavilion photos

Thank you for being here while I edit my way toward the querying and submission process.
See you soon, same dock, next tide,
Jennifer

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