Tim Bryant's Blog: Writing in South Carolina

The London-based Sylvia Plath Society, a global community of scholars, artists, students, and fans who love or want to know more about the poet Sylvia Plath, has published my review of Virginia Aronson’s Little Smiling Hooks, a collection of Plath-channeling poems, in their membership newsletter! Hell yeah they did! Even my bits about Pineapple Hill being a beach house in a cow pasture where I do most of my reading on the hot tub or second floor hammock!
Here’s a link to The Sylvia Plath Society’s “Who We Are” content—including their Second International Plath Zoomposium. https://www.sylviaplathsociety.org/wh...
Here’s a link to my review in their newsletter. https://mailchi.mp/.../newsletter-spe......
And a link to other reviews I’ve written. https://armadilloisland.com/category/...
Well alrighty then. That's all I've got to say about that.

This week I signed a publishing contract for a novel to be launched in 2026. It'll be the fourth one.

My first, Blue Rubber Pool, set in rural South Carolina and South America, is a love story disguised as the memoir of smuggler trying to retire. It was released by a small publisher in 2018 then self-published in 2023.

My second had the working title of Birdwatching on Edisto but too few could pronounce Edisto and the rest mistook it for a field guide. Regal House sat on it for what seemed like forever so I self-published a few months ago. It's set on a Carolina sea island and titled The Bird in Your Heart.

I'm currently finishing what may well be the final draft of a novel set at an old hotel beside the sea. My plan is to self-publish to fill the gap between now and 2026.

After the fourth comes out in 2026, I should have a fifth one ready.

Reading Abbie Hoffman's autobiography titled "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture" and he comments on MLK's life work toward equality but never mentions equity. Equality connected with so many of us. King certainly influenced my life. I wonder what he would have thought of equity instead of equality. Your thoughts?

A new discovery for me. Anyone else into John Fant?

A dog chasing its own tail.

First stereotyping blacks. Now stereotyping whites. ‘Round and ‘round it goes. Unable, it seems, to let go of itself.

I consider myself a Southerner, not by birth but by preference. To me, the South is warm, easy, rich with the kinds of flowers, trees, and birds I like most. With foods that make me feel at home.

I’ve never met a plantation owner. Just mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, farmers, and former “lint heads” (people who worked in textile mills before NAFTA shut them out). I’ve never met a slaveowner, obviously, only people who agree that slavery was wrong.

So I wonder what to do about myself as a writer living in the South writing about people and places here, about some of ways of the South I find interesting, worth weaving into stories.

Am I a racist? I hope not. I don’t mean to be.

Have I benefitted from white privilege? I imagine so. How could I not—having been white in a white majority location. The South, yes. But also the nation. And most of the planet as well.

This morning I read a Literary Hub article called The Troubled Task of Defining Southern Literature in 2021. The author, Ed Tarkington, had interesting things to say about the current transformation of Southern literature—the nurturing of greater diversity as the South looks for its best voice in time of rapid change. There was a line that stays with me. In mentioning his discovery of Brad Watson’s debut story collection, Last Days of the Dog Men, he said it “redefined what was possible for a bookish Southern white boy uncomfortable with the idea of ‘Southernness.’”

What is Southernness? Yes, the South has bad things woven into its fabric. Slavery. Lynchings. Jim Crow laws. The Southerners I have met, same as the Northerners I have known, believe those things were awful, believe the world is capable of doing much better, believe progress is being made.

Of course there are some people that disagree. But they are only to be found in the South. The South doesn’t own the patent on intolerance. Nor do white people. Intolerance isn’t a white thing only. There’s a lot of it being doled out these days from all across the rainbow.

Which brings me back to my situation as a straight white male living in the South writing about Southern places and people…

I’ve written a novel about a white, straight, middle-aged Southerner who divorces and loses his job at an Atlanta ad agency. His plan is to visit his mother on the Low Country sea island where he was born and raised. He’ll stay a few weeks while shopping for a sailboat worthy of sailing away from his trouble. It turns out, however, that his mother is quickly losing her eyesight while the generation-old familial estate needs extensive repair. Darkened portraits of his great-grands guilt him into staying.

It was short-listed but not accepted by a mid-sized publisher cultivating Southern stories and Southern writers. They said they liked the manuscript—including changes made after they requested a revise and resubmit. They said they liked my marketing plan. They said they even liked me (based on a Zoom meeting). So why didn’t they take it? I suspect that’s because I’m not POCLBGTQ+.

Check out listings for publishers and agents these days. In 2017 there were ones stating ooenly on the internet for all to see that they would welcome Southern authors and Southern stories.

They’re all gone now.

Why?

Where to?

Am I supposed to be, as Ed Tarkington said of Brad Watson, a bookish Southern white boy uncomfortable with the idea of Southernness?

If so, my latest novel is screwed. I’m screwed. The world is screwed.

It’s one thing to be uncomfortable with wrongs of the past. The way past and the recent past. I’m sorry those things happened although they were things I didn’t do, didn’t condone through silence as they happened. As far as I’m concerned, they’re not on me, they’re on people long gone from this world and maybe a small number of hold outs. Most of us have moved on, have learned from those mistakes and built that awareness into how we carry ourselves. I don’t agree that sons should be punished for the sins of fathers. No, I can’t go along with that.

So, while as I’ve mentioned, I’m uncomfortable with the wrongs of the past, I’m not at all ashamed of my Southerness. In fact, I’m proud of it, proud of the things of this place, it’s flowers, trees, beaches, foods, and climate. And of what’s in our hearts here. Demonstrated by our improvements, our enthusiasm for moving forward.

I worry about so much censorship happening. So many babies being thrown out with the bath water. Where are we going with this if we follow along? As we search for our one voice, how can we ever find it when all voices aren’t included. Not just POCLBGTQ+. But ALL.

Your thoughts?

# # #

It’s cold outside. Another winter presses down on Pineapple Hill, my beach house in a cow pasture in rural South Carolina. The sky is pale gray, despondent, ragged where bare branches of a forest reach up like claws tearing, scraping, leaving scars.

Usually, it’s summer when I read and review. Mid-morning in the sunny hot tub surrounded by banana trees and bamboo. Or late afternoon in a hammock on the porch where Honeysuckle has come in through the screen, a ceiling fan barely moves and, down below, looking out across the pasture, deer leap like children in tall grass.

Yet here I am, hunkered down against the weather same as the cow standing motionless in my field way out on its own like a package left out in the rain. I have come to my office with black-as-evil coffee very hot in a hard brown mug carrying also Virginia Aronson’s latest work, Little Smiling Hooks, a collection of poems about Sylvia Plath.

Plath the poet and novelist. Plath the confessor. Plath the diagnosed, drugged, suffocated, bathed in ice, wrapped in wet sheets, hard jolted, shot up, prodded, discussed and analyzed, written about and studied, gossiped about and feared, lyricized and revered, made into flesh and poetry. The Plath, as Aronson says, “married, beaten, baked in an oven…served cold.”

Plath the suicide reborn as a thin, wan waif with long stringy hair refusing to come away from the corner. The corner is safe. The corner is time eternal. A coffin and a vault. Serene. Aronson coaxes her out poem by poem, step by step. Out to where the light is better albeit still dark, still sad, angry, and even hideous at times.

If you know Plath well, these poems carry the full weight of Plath’s truth. Aronson clearly knows the Plath biography. And , as important, she is able to present it through a Plath-like filter. Aronson has wounds of her own and she has written about them in her book J’Adoube: Stories (previously South Florida Spin). For this reason, I think of Aronson’s poems about Plath as like clay pots spun with Plath-like hands.

For instance, the title Little Smiling Hooks alludes to bees, a steady presence in Plath’s world. Her father Otto, a German, was an entomologist who made a study of that insect and Plath, with her abusive husband ,Ted Hughes, kept bees when they lived in England. Bees, with their stingers, were all around Plath. And she was stung. A lot. All of her life. Hurting her. Making her bitter. Plath’s poems and semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar were about those stings and how vicious they were though disguised as benign. Of The Bell Jar, Plath said, "What I've done is to throw together events from my own life, fictionalizing to add color—it's a pot boiler really, but I think it will show how isolated a person feels when he is suffering a breakdown...”

Plath is all about self-reflection and, it seems, attempts to exorcise her demons. Such a deep diving venture is dangerous enough when pursued on one’s own. Deadly when encouraged by a dark-natured soulmate. In Plath’s case, the prodding came through her relationship with fellow poet Ted Hughes. Numerous Plath scholars believed he pushed her to descend too far—to suicide, actually.

In a poem called Wintertime, Aronson writes this in empathy:

…Mr. Face-the Wall
will teach her to
dig bare hands in his skull
and he in hers
prying open the trapdoor
to self-expression, rage.

The Plath-Hughes relationship was passionate, competitive and, ultimately, toxic. In the beginning, it ran red hot, centered on writing and writers. However, in time, Plath finds herself housebroken and uninspired.

In Flat Life, Aronson puts it this way:

The woman drags her shadow
around the room in circles
nothing stinks like a pile
of unwritten verse.


Aronson channeling Plath is heavy, heady stuff that goes way down to where the marrow has soured.

Like I said: If you know Plath well, she comes back to life on every single page of Little Smiling Hooks.

# # #

I've been away, doing other things. Among them, completing a novel then responding to a "revise and resubmit" request from a mid-sized publisher focused on Southern stories/Southern authors. The manuscript was set on Edisto Island near Charleston, SC, and about a middle-aged Atlanta advertising executive who, recently divorced and unemployed, planned to buy a boat to sail away from his troubles—the plan foiled when, during a visit to the small sea island where he was born, he learns his mother is losing her eyesight as the generations old estate needs extensive repairs. My revisions made me one of eleven finalists competing for a handful of slots with said publisher. Then, for unexplained reasons, I was kicked to the curb. Oh well. I've set that story aside to ferment or fester of whatever it needs to do while I work on another one, also set on the coast. I like to write. I don't so much like looking for a publisher again. My friend Mickey Corrigan says manuscripts aren't finished until they're out there for others to read. I wonder. My first book, Blue Rubber Pool, is out there for peeps to read...but is anybody picking it up? I wouldn't mind a few reviews. Good or bad.

Based on my enjoyment of Mickey J. Corrigan’s novel What I Did for Love and then The Physics of Grief, I look forward to reading her new release All That Glitters, scheduled for release on January 26. Buy it here. In the meantime, here’s her response to amazing, ingenious questions sent from Pineapple Hill recently:


Q. First of all, describe the Mickey J. Corrigan body of work in terms of the novels. Are these a series featuring the same protagonist across multiple stories? Why or why not?

A. The novels are all stand alone with different characters and plots. The only series I've had published ("The Hard Stuff") consists of four novellas, each featuring a different protagonist but all set in the same fictional town. My novels do not have the same setting or characters, but they do share features. Typically, the protagonist is a strong young woman dealing with or committing crime, involved in a challenging romance, and facing her own dark side. She's smart, independent, troubled and in trouble. Many of the novels are set in South Florida, where I live. A sunny place for shady people, this tropical paradise provides the perfect environment for quirky crime—in real life and in fiction. One of my novels, however, is primarily set in Boston, where I am from, another in New York City. I like to immerse myself in the mind of a fictional person and see the world through their eyes, so I can widen the view I have of life. I guess that's why each novel features a different protagonist with different obstacles and issues to overcome.

Q. Describe the Mickey J. Corrigan author persona. How was it formed? What are its key characteristics in terms of mindset, outlook, and behavior? Who the hell is Mickey anyway and who is her ideal audience? What type of person will most likely be attracted to Mickey?

A. Mickey was created after I began writing fiction because I had already published quite a bit of nonfiction in the form of serious minded books. The fiction I was writing was totally different, the voice nothing like the more formal one I used for my nonfiction. I chose a gender neutral pen name so that I could write first person accounts for both a male and a female protagonist. MJC is looser than I am, drinks a lot more than I can, and has a much more chaotic and adventurous life. My daily life is pretty straight, disciplined and dull, so I allow my suppressed wild side to emerge through the characters Mickey creates. People who like MJC books have a dark sense of humor, they like to read quirky fiction about women with minds of their own, and they appreciate surprising stories that do not follow a formula but take them to places they might not expect.

Q. Describe your writing process in terms of getting a new story going. Do you begin by writing freely or do you begin with an outline?

A. I avoid outlining and often am not sure where a story is headed. I begin with an idea, a concept or issue I want to explore. Some writing teachers say to never do this, they advise us to begin with a character or setting, and to outline very carefully. I say each to their own. The ideas that launch my stories are all different—talking to ghosts, being hired to kill cheating husbands, getting paid to attend funerals, falling in love with a sex offender or a student half your age, planning a school shooting, counseling disturbed people during a pandemic. I do a lot of research so the voice of the protagonist will sound authentic. I learn a lot about some esoteric subjects that way.

Q. You’re originally from Boston but have lived in South Florida for many years. How have these two places influenced your body of work?

A. I'm Irish-American and well educated due to my Boston upbringing. I have a dark sense of humor and enjoy bars, crazy stories, and unusual people. Florida provides all of that without the cold and snow, which is why I'm still here instead of back up north in my hometown. I love the tropics, the lush vegetation, exotic animals and insects, postcard perfect skies and white sand beaches. Residents and visitors from all over the world bring variety and excitement to the area. It's a beautiful, interesting place to live, but it's troubled. Like a gorgeous woman who draws you into terrible situations but makes it worth your while. At least, the writer in me sees life here that way.

Q. Do you address social issues in your stories? If so, which ones—and how?

A. I do address contemporary social issues in my novels, and in fact usually begin a book with one in mind. Some of the topics my characters confront include school shootings, mental illness, alcoholism, predatory teachers, the sex offender label, domestic violence, depression, college debt and prostitution. By allowing my characters to approach and wrestle with such issues, I try to offer readers viewpoints from lifestyles that might differ from their own. My characters are not politically correct, which earns my books some scathing reviews but also can broaden a reader's perspective. Researching and writing about such topics has helped me to expand my own understanding of some complex social issues.

Q. Is there a future in novel writing for older, straight, white Southern males? Should they be squeezed out to make room for underserved races and genders?

A. In my opinion, no writers should be squeezed out of the publishing world if they have talent and a good story to share. Writing is inclusive, anyone can do it, but publishing has not always been that way. It's great that publishers these days tend to invite manuscripts from all kinds of authors with all kinds of backgrounds. But I sure would hate to see publishers choose the novels they publish based solely on an author's age, race, ethnicity, or sexual identification. Some writers complain that male authors get the important reviews and preferential treatment, while others think that women and minorities are receiving all the contracts. How can both be true? The best approach for any writer is to work hard at the craft and be persistent in the search for a publisher. If you have talent and patience and a viable story to share, your identity should not get in the way.

Q. How might the writing and publishing communities be further impacted by polarized political influence?

A. This has become a major obstacle, I think, for both writers and readers. It's tricky for publishers these days to release books that might cause an uproar on social media because an author is writing from the viewpoint of a minority group to which they do not belong or being politically incorrect in some other way. Often the publisher has a choice to make when an author gets cancelled by half the population but is revered by the other half. Meanwhile, readers miss out on books that might help them to open their minds to new, opposing, or less polarized viewpoints. And writers are not producing their most creative or impactful work while trapped within the narrow boundaries imposed in order not to offend anyone. Here's the thing: the artist's job is to offend us, to wake us up and shake us up and spur us into thinking about life in new ways. But if the businesses that foster the arts are restrained by public outcry and mass shaming, then artists cannot flourish, invent, grow and inspire. This is unhealthy, because it is socially and intellectually limiting for writers, publishers, readers, and just about everyone else.

Q. Is cancel culture fascist?

A. Whoa, what? I thought we were talking about writing and publishing? Oh, I see, you want to know what I think about cancelling authors and politically incorrect books. In my opinion, book banning is indeed a form of fascism—one that has long plagued this country. In the relatively recent past, sex and profanity resulted in important books being banned in schools and libraries, even removed from circulation and pulped. Topics that were once deemed "immoral" caused writers to limit their subject matter. It used to be the religious right calling for books to be outlawed. Now the virtuous voices of cancel culture are coming from a different place, but their outcries sound the same to me: this offends me so nobody should read it. It's Fahrenheit 451, dystopian and oppressive. The arts are suffering and we are too.

Q. Will printed novels eventually be replaced by digital and audio formats?

A. I hope not. Digital books were a novelty hit and a threat to the printed format when they first became available, and many people prefer to use a digital reader. Audio books are popular because you can listen while you drive, work out, or wait in line somewhere. But enough of us prefer to have a physical book in hand, so there continues to be solid demand for print. During the first year of the pandemic, a lot of books were sold in every format. This, to me, is one positive note from a terrible year: more people buying books.

Q. Do most novelists today earn a living from it?

A. Nope. But that was never the case. Being a novelist is like being a tennis pro or a chess master: you don't make a living doing it, yet you continue to study, practice, and compete because it's what you love to do. Also, there's a sliver of hope that you could make it to the top. Who knows, you might one day win the lottery. One never knows what the future will bring and most novelists are depressed optimists or pessimistic dreamers.

Q. What has been your main reason for switching publishers?

A. I am not a guaranteed earner for publishers and I don't write series so my contracts are usually for a single book. I've published multiple novels with a couple of presses, The Wild Rose Press in the US and Salt Publishing in the UK. When I was writing nonfiction, I published with Random House and Doubleday, Penguin, Macmillan and Prentice Hall, and some smaller independent presses, depending on who my agent could sell to at the time. If I ever found a great editor at a generous press that wanted to publish all my books, I would be happy to work with a single publishing house.

Q. And finally, perhaps most important: What are Mickey’s favorite cocktails for winter, spring, summer, and fall?
A. Winter: There is no winter in Florida, which makes you thirsty all year round. Most of the time, any cocktail works. If it's cold out, a glass of decent whiskey, no ice, can be appealing, but this is as rare as an honest man in South Florida.
Spring: I'll try whatever's new, even hard seltzer (ugh), but usually end up with a glass of good red wine.
Summer: Hot days are made for hard cider. Or rich, dark beer. Or something frothy and light.
Fall: Is it fall? Because it's 85 degrees and the sun is scorching. Bartender!

Q. The hot tub at Pineapple Hill—where I read books written by others while brainstorming ones I’m writing myself—has unique supernatural powers from which I become way smarter and at least slightly more inebriated. What about you? Complete this interview by contributing a hot tub story of your own or from the news.

A. We had a hot tub for a while. But when lightning struck our house, it fried the heater. Perhaps this is just as well.

HERE's A RECENT INTERVIEW WITH SOUTHERN FICTION WRITER RON YATES—AUTHOR OF BEN STEMPTON'S BOY and MAKE IT RIGHT: A NOVELLA AND EIGHT STORIES.
Q: The protagonist in Ben Stempton’s Boy arrives in rural Georgia from Pittsburgh and much to his surprise is won over by the people and their ways. You did a wonderful job showing the South through the mindset of an outsider—enabling readers to experience the unexpected things of the South often overlooked or misunderstood by newcomers. Your story seems to lay these down in layers like blankets on a bed while fluently coaxing the reader to find comfort and warmth in those words. What factors weighed into your ability to do that?
A: Growing up in the South with extended family that included many prolific story tellers and exaggerators contributed to my ability to tell a story, but writing a story isn’t the same as telling one. The difference is where the layers come in. With fiction and creative nonfiction the author works toward immersing the reader in an experience. This involves writing scenes that are built with details upon details, layers if you will. If the layers aren’t carefully chosen and stacked in interlocking ways, the scene won’t work. I learned the importance of sensory details in my high school and undergrad college classes. But I didn’t begin to understand the important role that imagination plays until much later after I’d begun writing Ben Stempton’s Boy. I was reading some of our best literary authors then, among them Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike. I was blown away by the explicitness of the details and the precision of the layering in Oates’ We Were the Mulvaneys and Updike’s Rabbit at Rest and realized that I should try to achieve similar results in my novel. I worked toward that end, learning as I went. In doing this, though, additional problems arose: Where do all those details come from and when do you cross that blurred line between too many and not enough? I continue to struggle with these questions, as I believe all writers worth their salt should. Imagining deeply enough to build a good scene is very difficult. You have to experience it all in your mind in order to immerse the reader into scenes that play like a movie in her head so that she forgets she’s reading. All of the author’s imagined details, though, need not make it into the final drafts. The narrative has to be pushed along, so it becomes (after the initial imagining) a process of deciding what to leave in and what to take out. In the end it’s all a balancing act.
Q: You were born in Georgia, live in Alabama, and your recently published novel Ben Stempton’s Boy has a Southern setting—clearly your work qualifies to be found in the Southern Fiction shelf. There’s a much larger audience for mystery, thriller, and dystopian stories and many writers choose to work in those areas. You haven’t. Why not?
A: I’m not against making money, and I’d love for Ben Stempton’s Boy to sell a million copies. I’m also not opposed to incorporating certain elements of “genre” fiction into my writing. For example in the novel I tried to move the narrative along with action, suspense, a little sex here and there, and cliffhangers at the end of chapters. Good fiction, no matter the genre, should incorporate drama and tension into nearly every scene. I also believe that fiction should be character driven, no matter the genre. Many books in the categories you mention rely more on plot than character. I’m not interested in placing stereotyped characters into elaborate plots that rely on zombies, vampires, spy vs. spy intrigue, or sci-fi dystopian tropes. I’d rather write about real people—in other words explore the human condition, as trite as that sounds. Of course there are plenty of books in the various fiction genres that do this. Many worthwhile examples exist in all the genres that delve into universal themes with complex, believable characters. The lines between genres are often, thankfully, blurred. Just as “literary” fiction incorporates suspense and other page-turning traits, genre fiction can and often does incorporate characters who are waist deep in conflicts that are at least emotionally realistic. So here’s the short answer: I set out to write the kind of novel I’d like to read, and in doing so I relied on situations and characters who were prominent in my world during my coming-of-age years.
Q: The gothic aspect of Southern Fiction is attributed to post-Civil War conditions and emotions below the Mason-Dixon line. Why is it different than cultures found elsewhere in the USA—in the Northeast, the Midwest, and Pacific Northwest for instance? Why are you attracted to it? Why do you and other Southern Fiction writers feel inclined to preserve it rather than whitewash over it? Would the South be better off without reminders of its past?
A: I think all the regions are rife with their own “ghosts” and aberrations. There is a broad American Gothic that encompasses New England’s witches, the Wild West, and everything between. I suspect the South has its own special niche mainly because of the excellent Southern authors who emerged during the twentieth century, Faulkner being at the forefront of a long and distinguished line: Flannery O’Conner, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote . . . you and your readers know the names. These authors told wonderful stories about complex, twisted characters in a place that may seem foreign to people from other regions, just as New York seems like another planet to me. As readers we derive voyeuristic pleasure from visiting places that seem odd to us. Southern dialect and expressions are colorful; the rural settings with old barns and dilapidated farm houses and the small towns with the courthouse in the center of the square are simultaneously welcoming and foreboding. There is always some dark force or evil person lurking in the shadows, but this is just the stuff of fiction, no matter the setting. That said, I’ll acknowledge the other major factor in the development of the South’s distinctive fictional proclivities: the Civil War and its aftermath. The region was crushed, and Reconstruction was characterized by a parade of unscrupulous players on all sides. Misdeeds and horrors were swept under the rug. The idea that certain topics should not be discussed became a part of Southern culture. Southerners and the region as a whole are onions with many layers. Our best writers are those who successfully peel them back to reach a core truth about human existence. I write about the South because I understand the mores and eccentricities. It’s easier for me to imagine the scenes because I know how they look, smell, and sound. The Gothic aspect is hard to pin down. It stems from Romanticism and an emphasis on the magical and supernatural. Ben Stempton’s Boy doesn’t deny the supernatural—themes associated with Christianity are woven throughout—but the novel is more accurately an example of gritty realism that happens to be set in the South. I can’t speak for other writers, but in the novel I do try to preserve the particulars of a tumultuous period—as a kind of chronicle—in the history of a place I’m familiar with by doing my best to tell the truth. I have no other agenda, but I believe whitewashing is generally a bad idea.
Q: You’ve said you disapprove of how the South is depicted in books like God’s Little Acre and Tobacco Road. Generally speaking, what rubs you wrong and why? What of the South and her people are most often underappreciated?
A: The characters in Erskine Caldwell’s novels are sensationalized caricatures, grotesque and ignorant beyond credulity for me. I get that he was writing about the horrors of poverty during the depression years, but he didn’t imbue his characters with dignity. For decades society has taught that we shouldn’t stereotype, but it seems that this directive doesn’t apply to rural Southerners. I believe that people in the South are generally as intelligent as folks anywhere else, and they are also sensitive, generous, and compassionate. I resent any depiction of Southerners as more ignorant or backwards than people from other regions. The characters we create should be treated as real humans, worthy of honor and respect until they prove otherwise.
Q: How would you describe the relationship between blacks and whites in the South today? Is it mostly honest or mostly superficial? Should the South’s black-white past be sugar-coated so as not to offend? Why should readers of all races, genders, and ages be interested in Southern fiction authored by Southern white males over the age of sixty?
A: I believe deliberately stepping away from political spin and media narratives is essential for understanding race relations today. The South certainly has a history of discrimination and hatefulness, but much progress has been made toward equality and better relations. As a high school teacher for nearly thirty years I watched this unfold in the classrooms and cafeterias and playing fields. Teens (who are now adults) stopped excluding, broadening their friendship circles to include those with different skin tones. MLK’s dream of judging others on the basis of character instead of skin color was becoming a reality. Hell, I don’t know a single person in my age group (the old folks, as you pointed out in your question) who is a racist, based on the accepted definition of a decade or so ago. Now, though, according to institutions and groups who benefit from keeping us divided, racism is worse than in the sixties, and anyone who denies this is a racist. Morgan Freeman, in his famous Sixty Minutes interview with Mike Wallace, said the way to get rid of racism is to stop talking about it. His explanation was basically a paraphrase of MLK’s Content of Character principle. To stop talking about racism doesn’t mean to sugarcoat it; it’s a way of moving forward instead of perpetuating ill will by wallowing in the misdeeds of the past. Latent racism and discrimination exist, but this is not the most important issue we face as a nation. With the population at over 330,000,000, extremists are easy to find. Media outlets do a disservice by over-reporting on the haters and nut-jobs, making them seem like the norm rather than exceptions. Folks on the streets, in the grocery stores, in the workplace, and all walks of life are friendly and respectful to each other, regardless of color. In the South and elsewhere good deeds cross racial lines everyday. People of color are succeeding all around us. We all witness this, but those of us who are older see shifting social phenomena through a longer lens. Readers of all ages, genders, and ethnicities—if they’re not oblivious to the truth—should be able to benefit from reading older writers from different backgrounds because today’s issues can be better understood through deeper perspectives. Throughout history most cultures have valued and respected their elders. An author’s age, race, or background, though, shouldn’t be the deciding factor in whether or not they are worth reading. The quality of the work should stand on its on.
Q: Which writers have most influenced your work and why? Who are you reading now? Which, if any, trends among readers and publishers are likely to shape your writing career moving forward?
A: I’ve already mentioned Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike. I also include Edith Wharton, Hemingway, ZZ Packer, Richard Yates, Raymond Carver, Elizabeth Strout, and Jamaica Kincaid as major influences. There are many more, but I’ll let this list stand for now. Currently I’m reading Lying, by Lauren Slater, technically a memoir but of a very different sort. This little book is an exercise in deviously pushing against boundaries and having fun doing it, even when the content becomes dark. I read mainly to enjoy quality writing that I can learn from. As far as my work is concerned, current trends often leave me feeling like a fish out of water. All I can do is write the stories that come to me. I had a story published in the summer 2020 issue of The Courtship of Winds that is contemporary and not particularly “Southern” even though it’s set in Birmingham. It’s titled “Celia’s the Driver” and features a young black woman as a main character. I didn’t write this story as an attempt to follow trends. Celia just appeared to me and began to take on life and fictional possibilities. I liked her and built this story around her. It’s a good story. You should check it out!
Q: You pursued an MFA in Creative Writing after you had already gotten going as a writer. What did you learn that surprised you most in terms of the right and wrong approach to the craft? Which lessons in the MFA program are too often overlooked by emerging writers? Did the program suggest any rules that your unique writing voice still chooses to ignore?
A: A good MFA program shouldn’t be about rules or right and wrong but rather what works and doesn’t and why. If there is a rule or dictum, it’s a broad one: Read like a writer and vice versa. In other words, don’t read authors who suck. The bad habits will rub off on you. If you want to write quality fiction, you must read the best writers, those who are currently at a level higher than your own. Many poor writers sell a lot of books. Reading them, though, is like playing tennis with players who are less skilled. It might be fun for a while to kick the shit out of them, but you’ll never grow that way. We should always be stretching up toward a higher level. When reading great writers, we should pay attention to the tricks they use to move through time, to transition from one scene to another, or to make characters come to life. I used the word “tricks” intentionally. Think of them as devices or tools that create and sustain the illusion. It’s all smoke and mirrors, and the tricks can be learned. An MFA program can also, through the rigor and the workshop experiences, be valuable in helping the aspiring author discover her own aesthetic and develop a unique voice. Rules? Made to be broken, once they are fully ingrained and understood alongside of the desired fictional outcome.
Q: In addition to Ben Stempton’s Boy, you’ve had a novella and several short stories published. Tell us about those.
A: Make It Right: A Novella and Eight Stories is exactly what the title says, a fiction collection. The stories, including the titular novella, generally share this theme: Bad choices bring bad outcomes that are sometimes difficult or impossible to rectify. Most of them have a Southern flavor but several could be set elsewhere. They are dark and twisted with Gothic touches, but they are not without hope. The characters are mostly redeemable. I think the reader will also experience a few chuckles through the dark humor. There’s a full description on Amazon, a couple of blurbs, and a bunch of reviews.
Q: What are you currently working on? What themes might continue to influence your future work?
A: I’ve had stories published that aren’t in Make It Right, and I’ve written stories that haven’t found a home yet. I’ve recently been working on a new collection that includes some of these. The working title is Ourselves Again, and the overarching theme centers around missed opportunities and the alienation that results from the passage of time as we stumble through life. Fun stuff! I’m also contemplating a screenplay adapted from the Make It Right novella, and I’ve begun research for a story about the human trafficking and illicit sex trade that stems from our unwillingness to secure the southern border. That’s about it for now. As most writers I have more ideas than time to devote to them!
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I love the sea and everything about it—its animals, islands, pirates, old wooden ships, sunken treasures, early explorers, surfers, hurricanes, danger and soothing spirituality—and so Hendrickson's Ocean Almanac is the anchor to my cruising library for long lazy days of dicking around under sail.

This wonderful collection of facts—both impressive and trivial—has logged plenty of hours on my boat and in my duffel bag. Its pages are torn, dog-eared, smudged with tanning oil thumb prints, and spattered with coffee and rum.

Sure, you can access this stuff online but don't blame me if one night, way out beyond the cell towers, you all of a sudden find yourself jonesing to read about sea lice, the location of the planet's major sea currents, or Buster Crabbe's Rules for Safe Swimming.

If there's not a copy kept ready at your boat or beach house, you're an amateur.

Don't be that.