Evelyn C. McDonald
Arts & Culture Reporter
June 23, 2017 1:00 a.m.
Several years ago I was on the board of the Book Festival. I was in charge of the session on writing out at FSCJ. As I was watching people come in to register, I was struck by one author. He was wearing a long black duster coat, had long hair, black eyeliner, and black nail polish. His writing name was A. Dragonblood and he wrote books for young adults and teens. As you might expect, they were in the fantasy/scary genre. I must have looked startled because he said, “This is my brand.” Once he said that I realized the significance of his garb and knew exactly what he meant. It turned out that in his other life, he was an involved father and Little League coach.
That shows how much the word “brand” has seeped into our consciousness. However the creation of a brand didn’t start with “Mad Men.” As Nancy Blanton will tell us, creating and maintaining a brand is what the royals and other notables throughout history have done. Nancy is presenting a lecture on how these historical personages created a brand and maintained it, and why they found it necessary. This is the second of Amelia Lifelong Learning’s summer lecture series.
Nancy is an award-winning writer of historical novels, based in Irish history. Her first novel, Sharavogue, set in 17th century Ireland and the West Indies, was the first-place winner of Florida’s Royal Palm Literary Award. The Prince of Glencurragh, her second novel, won the Royal Palm Literary Award, the Feathered Quill Award bronze medal, and is a finalist for the M.M. Bennetts Historical Fiction Award. Her non-fiction book, Brand Yourself Royally in 8 Simple Steps, was a 2016 Florida Authors and Publishers Association President’s silver medal winner.
In her corporate career, Nancy was involved in corporate communications and brand management. As she tells it, she was doing a lot of research to get a better perspective on the times during which her novels are set. As she was reading, some of the things being done began to sound familiar. She realized that the historical personages she was reading about were creating a brand for themselves in response to difficulties and dangers confronting them.
Nancy will present “Tudor Tactics: How Historical Monarchs Invented Branding” at the Amelia Island Museum of History on Tuesday, July 11 from 9:30 to 11:30 am. The course fee is $10. To register, please go to the ALL website – www.amelialearning.com
Evelyn McDonald moved to Fernandina Beach from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. in 2006. Evelyn is vice-chair on the Amelia Center for Lifelong Learning and is on the Dean’s Council for the Carpenter Library at the UNF. Ms. McDonald has MS in Technology Management from the University of Maryland’s University College and a BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan.