Of my thirteen prior novels, eight of them were set in the American South. It’s where I grew up and lived for the first forty years of my life, from Tennessee down to the Gulf Coast. It’s a place I know better than any other. And because of that, I believe that it’s impossible to write about the south in … Read More
Raney and the road not taken
****Trigger warning for racism.**** I’ve had one legitimately wealthy relative: for the sake of this, we’ll call her Aunt A. She was my godmother, and since she never had any children of her own, she a) saw me as a substitute, and b) had no idea how to relate to a child. She’s the reason I hate squash to this … Read More
Writing Novels and Novellas in the Same Series
My friend Deborah Blake has just released her latest “Baba Yaga” novel, Wickedly Powerful. Last month, she also released a novella in the same series, Wickedly Ever After. Here she explains the challenge of writing different types of stories in the same series. And leave a comment for a chance to win a signed book! Someone asked me in an interview recently what … Read More
New Writer’s Day Video
It’s been a while since I posted here; life’s been a bit overwhelming. But now I’ve got something new to share. Over the past weekend I attended a combined reunion of my old college newspaper staff and fraternity. It gave me the chance to go around Martin, TN and shoot some video of the real locations that inspired those in … Read More
WISP OF A THING Advance Trailer
As a special Valentine’s Day present to all the Tufa fans, here’s the advance trailer for Wisp of a Thing, including music by the first honorary Tufa, Jennifer Goree. [media url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2k6A4NknCc] Enjoy, share, repost, and otherwise pass amongst yourselves.
Revealing a New Project: the Red Reaper
Back in November of 2009, I stumbled across a teaser trailer for the fantasy film, The Legend of the Red Reaper. It promised to be an action-adventure fantasy, and starred an actress I’d never heard of at the time, Tara Cardinal. As I watched the trailer, I realized that whatever the standard fantasy tropes on display, this was also something new and … Read More
Response to the NYT: Has Fiction Lost Its Faith?
Recently in the New York Times, writer and editor Paul Elie bemoaned the lack of depictions of Christian faith in modern fiction. He trotted out numerous examples of past masters (Flannery O’Connor, Anthony Burgess, etc.) and then mentions how current literary novelists simply don’t, apparently, have faith in Christianity. They don’t depict it because they don’t believe it. In part, he … Read More
Rant: the high cost of low quality
Last night, the wife and I saw Skyfall. I’ve seen every James Bond movie in a real movie theater since Live and Let Die, so my streak continues. I thought Skyfall was an adequate spy thriller and action film, but not much of a James Bond movie. Perhaps, given how this one ends, the next one will be more of … Read More
The Next Big Thing blog tour
My friend from the Heroic Fiction League on Facebook, Violette Malan, graciously invited me to participate in The Next Big Thing blog series. Each author answers the same set of questions, and passes them on to five more authors, who post their answers the following week and pass them on to five more authors, and so forth. You’ll find Violette’s … Read More
Five Great Movies About Writers
Writers aren’t that exciting to be around when we’re working. What we do–staring into space, muttering to ourselves, typing then backspacing and typing some more–isn’t exactly dynamic. It might be why there are so few good movies about writers actually writing. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of good movies with writer characters in them; that’s fairly common. But … Read More
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