Lee Lyons feels as if she spent most of her life driving between Anderson and Bluffton, South Carolina and Highlands, North Carolina. So in 2003, she said “enough spinning my wheels” and made Highlands home. Since moving here she is not sure if it is her age or the mountains that spark her creative side.
She volunteers on and off stage with the Highlands Community Players. Her favorite roles on stage were Cynthia in Welcome to Mitford and Vernadette in The Dixie Swim Club. Her best-loved line from Vernadette… “I never knew what real happiness was until I got married… but, by then, it was too late.”
For the last fifteen years and on most Tuesdays, you can find Lee at The Highlands Writer’s Group. And one of the things she loves about winters in Highlands is the quiet time to write. So she started writing her novel, Southern Shamrock, in winter over ten years ago and it has been an on and off again relationship. But after taking a full manuscript class under Jacquelyn Mitchard with Abroad Writers in Ireland, finishing her book became number one on her bucket list. In her debut novel, Southern Shamrock, Lee has mixed the seeds from her own life over the sorrow of losing her son with her Irish ancestors and weaved a fictional story that she hopes will be entertaining and hopeful to anyone who has lost a child.
Her favorite place to travel is Ireland. So consequently, she’s visited there six times, and bits and pieces have come through in her novel. But she also admits to being a slug who loves reading, and walking her dog, and just lounging around watching The Hallmark Channel. And to that she adds, “Sharing a wee bit of Jameson with good friends is not bad either.”