As a native North Carolinian, I immediately thought of Asheville when I read your post. While NC has a lot of great cities (I'm especially fond of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill), I think all of them will have the humidity problem other than Ashville since it's up in the mountains. It can be fairly cold in the winter but usually doesn't have ALL that much snow. Summers are nice and a lot of people from NC go to Asheville during the summer to get away from the heat and humidity in the lower parts of the state. Spring and fall in Ashehvile are GORGEOUS.

You should be able to find jobs there with the university (a terrific smaller liberal arts university within the UNC system) or other employers. The people in Asheville are friendly and the cost of living is reasonable. As Chuck said there's a fairly artsy (but in a good way) vibe about Asheville and you get a lot of the cultural offerings you normally get in larger cities without the traffic, crime, and pollution.

As you can probably tell, Asheville is one of my favorite cities in the world -- I'd love to retire there someday. I'd go live there in a heartbeat if my career didn't require me to work at a major research university (which UNCA isn't). Go visit sometime and see what you think!

PaulandPenny -- you've gotten some good advice here, especially on Asheville, NC. It really is a great town. We try to make it there for a visit whenever we can. Rich is right that there are lots of nice places to live in North Carolina but Asheville is probably the closest fit to what you want (mostly because of the humidity thing).

There is also a thriving literary scene in NC so as a journalist you should feel right at home. And even though Asheville is up in the mountains, the coast isn't out of the question for a long weekend - pretty much you hop on I-40 and go until you run out of land!