How does one become an honorary Tufa, you may wonder? The criteria is really pretty simple. You must have a song that you’ve written quoted (with your permission, of course) in a Tufa story. So far, there are three honorary Tufas. The first was Jennifer Goree. You can find out more about Jennifer and her connection to the Tufa here, … Read More
Interview: Andrew Brasfield, songwriter of Cold Wind
When I began planning Time of the Season, my holiday-themed e-book chapbook, I already had two of the stories. Both the title story and “A Ghost, and a Chance” had been around for a while. But I wanted to write something new, and I’d gotten such a good response from my novel, The Hum and the Shiver, that I decided … Read More
The Ubiquitous Daddy Issues Club
Recently I mentioned to author Patrick Somerville (This Bright River) that Dean Bakopoulos’s first book, Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon, resonated with me because I have unresolved issues with my own late father. Patrick said, “Yeah, like every other writer.” It wasn’t mockery: he was saying, in essence, “Welcome to a club of which you were already a … Read More
Writers and the Throne
It’s a well-known maxim that creative types, for the most part, get no respect from their families. Even Jesus knew this, saying (according to King James), “A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house” (and no, I’m not comparing myself to Jesus). Thankfully, in my own house … Read More
George Lucas and Elvis: Echoes from 1977
Thirty-five years ago, two things that fundamental changed my life happened in the same summer. In May, Star Wars was released. In August, Elvis Presley died. The arrival of Star Wars turned the thing that everyone in my small town mocked, that had gotten me teased and beaten up, into the hippest thing in the world. Spaceships, aliens and robots … Read More
Guest blog: author Dale Short on superstition
Dale Short has guest blogged here before, and he’s welcome any time. Between his writing and his radio show, he’s got a full appreciation of all aspects of Southern life, and his collection of short stories, Turbo’s Very Life, is one of the best books I’ve ever read. He’s joining us today to talk a bit about superstitions in the … Read More
Firefly Witch news (includes a freebie!)
The new Firefly Witch e-book chapbook collection, Croaked: More Tales of the Firefly Witch, is now available for only $2.99. Also, from now through Monday, July 2, 2012, the first Firefly Witch collection is available for FREE on Amazon. So if you’re curious about this new character and her world, there’s no better way or time to check it … Read More
The Return of the Firefly Witch
I sold my first short story in 1996. It appeared in a defunct horror zine called Gaslight: Tales of the Unsane. It introduced Tanita “Tanna” Tully, a character I subsequently wrote about for nearly ten years. She was: a) blind, but could see in the presence of fireflies, b) a parapsychologist, and c) a Wiccan high priestess known as Lady … Read More
Interview: Kim Dryden, co-director of Appalachian film “Over Home”
My introduction to Appalachian culture, which figures so strongly in The Hum and the Shiver, really took place in the late 1990s. Prior to that, I’d looked on the Smoky Mountain region of Tennessee with some of the same distant awe as anyone else. Tennessee is a long, narrow state, and I grew up on the whole other end from … Read More
Guest blog: Dale Short on the music of the South
Dale Short is the author of Turbo’s Very Life and The Shining Shining Path, and the host of “Music from Home,” which airs on Oldies 101.5 in Jasper, AL and is archived here. I was born in the middle of the woods near a coal-mining town in northern Alabama, and I grew up in church. Literally. Seeing as everyone in … Read More