Charles M. Clemmons was born at home in the countryside near Clayton, North Carolina, on what is now an educational state forest. Growing up in the American South, working on his father's farm, and exploring 300 acres of forest accompanied solely by his faithful dog Snowball, proved to be formative life experiences.He received an engineering degree from NC State University in 1966; an MBA from the University of Connecticut in 1976; and an AAS degree in Film & Video Technology from North Lake College in Irving, Texas, in 1994.Retiring from a corporate career in telecommunications in 1994 at age fifty, he refocused on his real passions: documentary filmmaking, photography, and discovering the history and lifeways of his parents' families in Brunswick County, North Carolina.In 2004, he was awarded two Boston/New England Emmys(R) (writing and production) for the American Public Television documentary, Mystic Voices: The Story of the Pequot War. After forty years in Connecticut, Charles returned to his roots in North Carolina in 2016.His inspiration for Aila's Journal came from his own experiences and aspirations growing up in the American South, his own family's oral history, and his historical research of the Civil War and Southern Reconstruction. Aila's Journal is his first novel.For further information, visit www.wiltonwood.com.
