I’m from Tennessee, as are both sides of my family. I’m familiar with a lot of the places that are now flooded. Memphis, Nashville, Smyrna, I-24, I-40…these are places I could almost navigate in my sleep. It’s a region that gave the world an awful lot of cool things. And with the horrible damage likely to be revealed as the … Read More
Review: a vampire suffragette in Alaya Johnson’s Moonshine
I first heard about Moonshine when I was on a 2009 convention panel with its author, Alaya Johnson. The central conceit–in 1920s New York, a woman battles for the rights of vampires much as other suffragettes stood up for women and immigrants–fascinated me. My own vampire novels, Blood Groove and The Girls with Games of Blood, also draw parallels between … Read More
Just in: the cover for The Girls with Games of Blood
Here’s the cover for The Girls with Games of Blood, the sequel to Blood Groove. Leave a comment before May 7 for a chance to win one of five signed paperbacks of Blood Groove, my first novel about vampires in Memphis in the Seventies. The Girls with Games of Blood will be available in July!
So, at last we meet…
One massive fringe benefit of teaching at the Wisconsin Writers Institute this past weekend was that I finally got to meet my agent Marlene Stringer in person. That’s right: although she’s been my agent for five years and listened patiently while I whined, kvetched, bitched and wheedled, we’ve never actually met. Now we have, and here’s the photo to prove … Read More
Notes from Odyssey Con (OddCon) 2010
Just back from Odyssey Con 2010 in Madison, WI. High points:–meeting guest of honor Harry Turtledove for the first time.–hanging out with other guest of honor Tobias Buckell who I haven’t seen in over a year.–dinner with Toby, Steven Silver, Sarah Monette and Lynne and Michael Thomas.–premiering the first chapter of The Girls with Games of Blood.–participating in a great … Read More
Fatherhood, Spenser style: Early Autumn
Since the death of Robert B. Parker in January 2010, I’ve been re-reading his Spenser novels. The earliest ones, written in the 1970s and 80s, staked out his moral as well as physical territory, revolving around ideas of traditional masculinity in conflict with the modern world. And in 1981’s Early Autumn, Spenser demonstrates how his code is built and applied … Read More
"The most demanding form after poetry…"*
(*the short story, according to William Faulkner.) For the first time in a long while, I’m working on a new short story. When I had my epiphany moment in 1996 and decided it was time to get real about this whole writing thing, I started with short stories. For a while I wrote a new one every week, as if … Read More
The dignity of the faux dead
This is an addendum to my earlier post on P.F. Kluge’s novel Eddie and the Cruisers. And I swear it’s true. In the late 1980s I worked in Florence, Alabama for the Olan Mills Portrait Studio chain. The studio manager was a woman then in her mid-forties, and one night just after closing our conversation turned to how much I … Read More
Found movies: Posse (the one from 1975)
The 1975 western Posse poses a fascinating set of ethical and moral dilemmas. Released just after President Nixon’s resignation, it speaks in the standard western vocabulary: tough marshal (Kirk Douglas), wily outlaw (Bruce Dern), a posse on the criminal’s trail, shoot outs and train chases. But its purpose is to show the stained truth behind these pure symbols, both within … Read More
Giants of West Tennessee: the brown recluse
Okay, it isn’t a person. It hasn’t done anything historic, although it has made the news on occasion. But for me, the brown recluse spider (in Latin loxosceles reclusa) is one of the most influential residents of West Tennessee. Except for one in the bug exhibit at the Nashville Zoo, I’ve never seen one alive. As the name implies, they’re … Read More