The Half and The Whole

The 1980s. Photos by my mother.

 

He would have made fun of me for this with a sardonic grin slashing his face. The quip would have been witty and mostly meant in good fun. He would have said that I could do this better than I am. That is okay, I would have deserved it.
 

I would have called him a pretentious snob and he was sometimes. In a moment we would have argued about which Japanese car was the best. He always said it was Mazda, he had one of those before the Mustang. The Mustang that stomped me racing down Marietta Highway. I would have defended my Datsun Z, it was prettier, sleeker and it was mine. Teenage pride and stupidity in a double helix. We thought we knew it all and we knew nothing.

Saturday morning, I put the peanut butter jar in the kitchen sink instead of the pantry. I made coffee without water. It was that kind of shock that cracks up the icebergs of sleep and messes with the timeline of waking life. Who cares about a winter storm on the way or whether your socks match?

He went on to a great life and it is terrible for his family to lose him. His life and happiness were too short and that is not okay. What do you say? The longer you live, the shorter your time seems to become?

This feels like an epilogue at the end of a book and it sort of is. He was half the character of Elliot in my books. He was also a real whole person in my life and many others. 

The last time we spoke was too long ago, when he was in New York and it went poorly. Our problem was irreconcilable. I should have left the last memory of him at graduation on the football field, not that that was great either, when I turned and walked away after that conversation. That is okay too, it has to be. 

I cannot be selfish or possessive of an old friend. This is not about me. What thoughts I have are the equivalent of memories shared in the dim passages of a funeral home with neutral wallpaper. Have a seat on the imitation Victorian sofa next to the dusty fake flowers, it might comfort you. A man in a suit with a carnation pinned to his lapel will fetch you a paper cup of water. It was his life that was lost. I just picked up the echoes. It mattered, his life and death, it mattered a helluva lot. I could say more, but most of the important words have already been written and were hung in the warm air of a June night on a Paulding County football field. There are no regrets. I remember those stupid times, those great times. I remember him as the best friend I did not deserve, but he was lost long ago between the couch cushions of time. 

"Chris, don't be as maudlin as an NBC after-school special," he might have said while opening his trombone spit valve on my shoe. "Now, can I borrow a dollar for the concession stand?"

He died on a Wednesday. He was 53. That is not okay and that is the whole of it.

 

Cocoon Forty Years Later

 

Along the Pinellas Bayway near St. Petersburg, Florida. Some scenes of Cocoon were filmed in this area. Photo by me, 2009.

On a recent summer night, I re-watched the popular summer of 1985 hit, Cocoon. The movie was released that June and my mother and I watched it in our local small-town theater, The Paulding Plaza. The two of us spent many a night in the late 70s through the mid 80s going to movies together until I started dating or going with friends. We saw lots of duds and some good movies too, but Cocoon was a dud. I was a bored twelve-year-old watching a movie about elderly people swimming, dancing and arguing while wearing bad clothes. The characters were the ages of my grandparents and less entertaining. I was eager for the credits to roll, charge up the aisle into the lobby and throw away the empty popcorn container. My mother and I would have discussed the movie on the fifteen-minute drive home with the windows down letting in the cool night air. She liked it and I told her that I did not. She probably said something like I was too young to understand or that I was too picky. She might have been right, but I saw nothing wrong with being picky about what kind of entertainment I liked.

I was willing to give the movie a chance and had reasons to be hopeful that it was going to be good. After all, I was not just any twelve-year-old boy; I was a twelve-year-old gay boy that was into space movies, the ocean, the beach and my newest secret Hollywood crush, who was the same age as me, was in the movie. It was to be the second movie that he was in that had come out that month. I was excited to see Barret Oliver again. I had just seen him two weeks before as the main character (a boy with a big secret) in another new movie that I enjoyed, D.A.R.Y.L., and had liked him since The Neverending Story.

Barret Oliver in Cocoon.

It was not to be, as I was soon disavowed of that hope when I saw that the aliens and their spaceship were not cool in a Star Wars or Close Encounters of the Third Kind way. Barret Oliver was barely in the movie, appearing as an ornament at the beginning and at the end and was absent most of the movie. In the few scenes he was in, he looked as bored making the movie as I was watching it, which might have been the result of the wooden dialogue he was given and bad direction by Ron Howard, who has directed an entire career of pablum. I felt cheated out of a good time by the movie. 

The highlight for me was the ocean and the laid-back atmosphere of 1980s Florida that permeates the movie. Ron Howard at least managed to capture the Florida I miss. Florida was a different place then, more relaxing and peaceful. It was before the state was overly built up, filled with crazy drivers who have boiled their brains with too much sunshine and humidity and it was a place not trying to be more than swamps and orange groves surrounded by nice beaches with Mickey Mouse in the middle. Miami, gauche and trashy today, was not even that big in 1985 despite how the hit show that debuted the year before, Miami Vice, made it seem. 

Wilford Brimley and Barret Oliver during a scene along the Pinellas Bayway in Cocoon.

Cocoon was filmed in St. Petersburg, a place I have spent plenty of time over the last two decades, second only to the amount of time I have enjoyed in Fort Lauderdale. St. Petersburg's downtown has undergone significant change too, but some of the film locations are still recognizable like, John's Pass and the Pinellas Bayway/Tierra Verde/Fort De Soto area. One can go to the beach in St. Pete and not feel as though you are surrounded by influencers faking their fantasy lifestyle of faux wealth and the lie of eternal happiness.

Cocoon was a bland movie about old people who wanted to live forever even if that meant leaving everyone that they claimed to love behind on another planet. It seemed selfish to my twelve-year-old eyes. The old people were silly and the aliens acted more like a cult. Forty years passed before I chose to watch it again. This time, I would have the eyes and experience of a fifty-two-year-old and I would watch it at home. My mother has long since died; she did not get to live forever with aliens, and I was closer to the age of the actors in the movie. I might have an ache or pain every now and then, or “once in a blue moon,” as my mother would have said, so maybe I could relate to physical human frailty. Barret Oliver has not made a movie since 1989, The Plaza Theater closed in the early 2000s and I live nowhere near my hometown. I have always kept my love for movies and this year, after eight years of not going, I returned to watching them in theaters. 

 

Sometimes my perspectives on movies from the past change. A movie I loved as a kid might be one I like less now or a movie I did not like then might be more interesting at this age. The Breakfast Club, which also came out when I was twelve in 1985, is a movie I loved then, but today a film about a group of teenagers doing detention in a school library is as entertaining as reading people's political diatribes on social media. Even the nostalgia factor cannot keep me interested. I am one who believes that tastes in entertainment should mature as we age. I find it odd when adults, especially men, are interested in Star Wars or Legos or collecting toys from their childhood to display. It is some sad symptom of Peter Pan syndrome.

Forty years onward, I still did not like Cocoon. The movie had an interesting beginning but quickly lost itself in the waters of the fountain of youth or the Gulf of Mexico and became sugary sweet and sentimental. It was an instant pudding movie that was safe and the same no matter how many boxes you tasted. I forced myself to finish it. This is a movie about selfish people leaving the ones they love behind so they can live forever without pain or responsibility.

Brian Dennehy and Steve Guttenberg in Cocoon 1985.

After forty years, I remain picky about my entertainment choices. If anything changed for me, it was developing an appreciation of the short swim trunks and nice body that Steve Guttenberg showed off on his boat. I have also traveled Florida from Pensacola to Key West and back several hundred times and there are parts of the state I still like, but those are a secret.

Younger Than X

In my house by candlelight during the storms. Photo by me, May 2025.

 

The night sky turned blue twice and there was an explosion. A nearby transformer exploded during the storms and the electricity went out. Saturday it rained, Sunday it rained and Monday and Tuesday too. Four and a half inches of rain fell and it was nice. Banking up the rain before summer sets in and the inevitable gaps between storms that will lead to dry spells was good fortune.

Sunday evening in traffic between the storms, there was a sign that maybe rock is not utterly dead among the lettered generations younger than X. The car next to me, windows down, blasted Nirvana's Lithium. The driver was either in his late teens or early twenties. Hope lives in the bangs of those born this century that maybe they can have their own guitar hero who is not dead or is not classic rock. I listened to the Doors and Hendix and Janis at that age, so I understand.

Maybe I can accept the Jins as another sign of hope? Let me introduce those younger than X to the Pixies and you are welcome.

Two weeks ago I ran into someone who I had not seen for thirty-four years. I was at a garden nursery on another Sunday afternoon when I recognized the unmistakable posture of someone I had known quite well in high school. I turned to the person I was with and whispered, “I know him,” and discreetly pointed at a guy in his early fifties dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved tee shirt.

It was the shoulders rolled forward, the walking on his tiptoes and the lean of his onion-shaped body that gave him away. The chubby-cheeked face was the same as I remembered too, plus some additional lines and sags beneath the eyes and on his jawline. For only the second time ever, in the years since my schooling ended in Paulding County, when I encountered someone from the long-ago past, I always spoke; I avoided the person. I turned the other way into the crowd and hoped that he had not recognized me from ten feet away. I had no ill feelings for him, but there was no wish to reconnect either. I live approximately a hundred miles and an hour and a half away with light traffic from where I grew up and do not expect to run into people I knew as a kid, but I guess it was inevitable that it would happen close to home. 

 

The other time was in 1995 at Emory University. I was twenty-two, living in the city in an old factory, hooked on Pansy Division, ear ring wearing (see the cover of my novel Shadow's Gravity), fully out of the closet and rejecting anything or one from the past. I was attending a gay themed play and among the audience was a girl I went to school with from elementary to high school. I was not shocked to see her with other females in that setting, but it was the first time I ran into another person from Paulding County at a gay event.  I slid down in my seat and buried myself in the program until the lights went down.

Generally, I welcome reunions with old friends in person (I've had a number that I've mostly enjoyed) or on the internet. This time, I did not care for the glory days of youth chitchat that always happens or learning how or if he had changed. He did not interest me much then and I doubted he would have now. I also did not want him to know that we lived near each other so that there would be no dropping by my house unannounced either.

In my last few reunions there has been another topic of discussion added: did you hear that so-and-so died?

My answer is usually a surprised no. I do not expect people my age to be dying or even to have bad health. I know it is possible, but it should be the exception.

Back to work on the next novel.

 

 

Shadow's Gravity

 

Me during the various periods of the Aviary Hill series from 1979 to 2005.

This week was the release of my latest novel, Shadow's Gravity. It is the last book of the Aviary Hill series. The series is written about my family and my life between the years 1979 to 2005. 

The series began with Dweller On The Boundary in 2020 and ends this week with Shadow's Gravity. It has been forty years coming since a conversation with my father over pizza in December 1984. There have been many secrets, tragedies and a few triumphs in this story. Hopefully there has been some humor along the way and readers have met some interesting characters, from Uncle Ridley to Robin, David The Bishop, English Stan, Dylan, Everett, Piper, a boy from New Hope and the rest. I will miss writing about most of my characters, but I still have some of them in real life. 

Shadow's Gravity is the most complex, mature and most lengthy novel of the series as it takes place when I was twenty-two to thirty-two years old. It is set in the past, but readers should find that it remains relevant to today with some of the topics contained in it. 

I began writing this series in 2018. The release of Shadow's Gravity brings to an end a writing process that spanned the last six years with origination for the idea dating back to a conversation with my father over pizza in December 1984. This book brings to an end a forty year project. There is no plan or desire by me to write further in this series. I am free to move on to writing something else after four decades and what comes next will hopefully not take as long to complete.

There is plenty of material and stories that were edited out of the series, but with anything, it is impossible to tell everything. What was published in four books was the distillation of those years. It is unlikely that any of the stories cut during the writing process will see the light of day, though I believe some of them are some of the best writing I have done. Perhaps they will serve as inspiration for what I write next.

Shadow's Gravity is in part dedicated to the readers who took a chance and allowed me to tell them a story. I am grateful to them for their time and interest.  Thank you for reading.

Update On My Next Novel

 

That is me in October 2001 at a special place I have written about a few times, Patton's Run on the Nantahala River in North Carolina.

As of this morning's edit, it appears this novel should be finished and out by late June barring any major life interruptions or unforeseen developments. The word count currently sits at 112,000 words which would be by far my longest book. The cuts have already been deep and I want to bring this book in at around 100,000 to 105,000 words max.

This is the end, spanning from 1995 to 2005. It contains all of the answers that I can ever provide about everything I have written about my family and life. I hope readers find it engaging, fun, mysterious, surprising, not too depressing and different. I have been open how I struggled with a period of serious depression to write this. There are some seriously ugly, shocking and sad moments in it, but humor finds its way through. The last chapter, Silent Bridges, fits this lifelong project.

Farewell to Robin, Oliver, Elliot, all of the characters from all of the books, the past and may they rest in my new written time capsule. This book is for Everett, Louisville, Paulding County, Baby X and all of the other hidden children.

Thank you for reading.

 

At My Most Fragile

 

It is late winter, the middle of February, but here in Georgia that means early Spring. We come by our global warming here naturally. The trees are budding and I sit here in my Keith Haring tee shirt, needing a haircut and wearing a fuzzy cardigan still living like it is 1994. Blueberry yogurt is digesting in my stomach and the morning sun is out. The birds, no Robins, are singing what sounds like Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. Needless to say, I'm feeling stupid and contagious.

Without further fanfare here is the promotional mock interview for my next novel due this summer.

 

---

 

At times I didn't think I could write this book.

 

Let's talk about secrets.

Okay. You first. (laughs)

You have written extensively about family and personal secrets. Some of them have been quite tragic including sexual abuse, rape and suicide. Some of these secrets are related to growing up gay in a small town and others were more common to American families from the 70s and 80s such as infidelity, domestic violence and divorce. Having revealed all of this, how do you feel about it and what's left to tell?

I said something a month ago, it was that I found writing to be an emotionally abusive occupation. I had to go back during the writing process and relive all of it to some degree by reading my old journals, watching videos, looking at photos and talking with people that knew me then. I've cried over some of it, I've been angry about other parts and Shadow's Gravity put me into a serious depression last year. At times I didn't think I could write this book, but then it clicked for me and out it came every morning.
It comes with a price besides my mental health and there are some people who look at me or think of me differently after knowing, but I can't be worried about it. I wanted the truth to be known.

And it's not like domestic abuse, infidelity and some of these topics were exclusive to the American family only when I was growing up. Humans are still humans and there remains no cure for those problems within families, nor are these problems strictly American.

If growing up gay today is easier, I can't say. It might be a different time and on some level easier, but being different will always be a challenge. It might be new times, but with that possibly comes a new set of problems. If anything, it may be more confusing and embarrassing for children with some of the attention placed on it in school these days. I know that if I was a fourth grader and the teacher was discussing gay life in class I would have turned bright red and tried to crawl into a crack in the floor. I don't know if that perspective is taken into consideration. I knew what I was, but I didn't want others to know because I was taught what I am was shameful by society. Children today may be different though and if the shame associated with it can be minimized then that's a good development. It might save lives. It's difficult to find trustworthy current statistics on suicide rates because of how the numbers are clustered together under the umbrella of LGBT.

There are plenty of secrets left. I've never teased some of what is in this book. Also, I've never told all of the abusive stories that happened in New Hope at home or at school. There is one story in this novel which is about a complete emotional breakdown of mine in my teens. I finally came clean with it in therapy in the 2000s. I also come clean with readers that have followed my books about what I felt for someone that I wasn't completely forthright about before.

 

When does Shadow's Gravity take place?

Originally it was planned to span nine years. It ended up covering 1995 to 2005. I was a busy person, much happened and it made for a more complete circle from 1979 to end in 2005. This book sprawls and covers lots of territory in terms of themes, people and locations. During this time, there were also crucial events that still define our world today such as the widespread adoption of the internet and cell phones, Y2K, September 11 and the heinous murder of Matthew Shepard. This novel is my most ambitious. I'm excited about it and I feel the same about it as I did when I was writing Dweller On The Boundary.

There was another unplanned change. When I was writing this novel something happened in real life to one of the people behind one of the main characters of all my books. This development resulted in a drastic change in the course of the book.

I deeply loved him and considered him my twin brother.

What happened and to whom?

I can't say what exactly happened, but it was David The Bishop. I was shocked at what occurred involving him and it made me want to go back and delve further into that relationship in an attempt to find clues and offer an explanation. I haven't had any contact with him since the 1990s, but I was hurt by what recently happened with him. It made my head spin because I thought so highly of him, I deeply loved him and considered him my twin brother. It tainted my memories of us. As with any of my relationships, I've never spilled everything, just what I viewed as the most important aspects. I had to go back and examine that relationship and I did write more about it. My heart breaks for him that it came to this.

 

Paulding County has been the epicenter of your books, how much Paulding County is in this book?

The story picks up with life at the factory in Atlanta when I worked at Turner Broadcasting. It surprised me when writing this book, how much Paulding County is in it. I look back on life in that period and I don’t automatically think about Paulding County, but I realized it was still an important part of my life and I was often there. I lived there twice. Even when I was living elsewhere it seemed like there was a chain tied around my feet connected to the bumper of a van with one of those murals painted on the side that was popular when I was a kid and it was dragging me back out there for events. Years after I had graduated I was at Paulding County High School three times, talk about being surrounded by ghosts. My mindset then was, one day I will say goodbye to Paulding County once and for all, but it seemed impossible. I suppose I'll never say goodbye to it now.

 

What's your relationship with Paulding County these days?

I was there this past January, but I don't have a relationship with it besides the cemeteries. I don't live that close to it anymore, about an hour and a half away and with traffic it's a miserable drive. I pass through there a couple of times a year and it's less recognizable each time. I'm proud to be born and raised there, but we aren't compatible. If I haven't made that case yet then I hope it is obvious in Shadow's Gravity after I disclose what happened at my last house there in 2002. In the last few years, writing these books I have walked down Main Street in Dallas, the cemetery in New Hope, the Silver Comet Trail a couple of times and have been a few other places. I feel like maybe I've conquered the past, but then being there still makes me a little jittery. Also, I doubt I'll ever be asked to come out and speak at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon or at the main branch of the library where I met David The Bishop at a chess tournament. My experiences there are probably not something they would want to promote.

 

My belief is that if you wanted me to say something nice about you then you should've treated me better when you had the chance.

 

Are you saying you've presented Paulding County in a negative light?

Not entirely and I haven't been unfair to it by any stretch. My belief is that if you wanted me to say something nice about you then you should've treated me better when you had the chance. I loved growing up there, but I have to be honest. The Paulding County educational system was great to me at the time with some failings, but the community as a whole wasn't too kind. It was a pretty place though. As an adult, I don't have much in common with it and that's a sign that one, or in this case, both have changed.

 

Does Decatur County, Tennessee figure into this book?

Yes, I was there frequently in the 2000s. I don't even know if my family knew how often I was there then. My mother didn't know. It was the beginning of something new with my father. There may never have been any of the books in this series without those times in Decatur County. My relationship with my father may not have been as cut and dried as readers may suspect. We were close for fourteen years, with twice weekly phone conversations, regular visits and we traveled together.

 

You mentioned ghosts earlier, are there ghost stories in this book?
Yes, there are three ghost stories and another type of supernatural experience in this novel. The one ghost that my character experienced terrified me in real life. You can think what you want about ghosts, but I believe they are a genuine phenomenon. Whatever they are I cannot say, maybe they are a form of hallucination or maybe they are something that is not a creation of our mind. I'm open to either possibility. Most people will not believe in them, but unless you've experienced it then I suggest keeping an open mind about them. I've experienced way too many shocks in my life, but the experience I had in this book was the most shocking experience I've ever had and I have no explanation for it.

 

Who is your favorite character in this book?

Everett. I loved getting to finally write about this wonderful person that was locked away in my past. He was a transplant like me to Louisville, but had lived there longer and had a family connection to the city. He was a significant part of my Louisville life. He came from New York, was private schooled and was very much from a WASPY background. He was a polished person in areas that I was more rough around the edges. He was someone that I would have considered unattainable, he was extremely beautiful, sophisticated and intelligent. He was the kind of person that I did not think I would ever know or become involved. He came into my life in an unusual way and I'll leave it at that.

 

What made Louisville so special for you that you mention it on a frequent basis?

It was a city that gave me everything I ever dreamed and experiences I didn't know that I wanted. No place has ever embraced me the way that city did in the nineties. It was beautiful, historic, interesting, charming at every step and it had zero connection to my past. It was everything Atlanta was not for me, a chance to live a fresh new life. It was also fun trying to figure out what the mystery odor was that wafted around the city on certain mornings.

 

It feels like I'm losing them all over again and that hurts.

 

Since this is the end of the series, readers will expect resolution to the storylines that have been featured in your books. Is that going to happen?

Yes. It will not be neat and tidy though and requires an epilogue which is something I've not included before. I will resolve everything from my grandmother, to the search for Oliver, coming out to family, my relationship with Dylan, David The Bishop, Elliot, other people and places too like Aviary Hill.

Now this is coming to end, I am both happy and sad that this is the last book in the Aviary Hill series. I am happy to finally finish what I set out to do since I was a child and can move on to new writing territory. I am sad because I fell in love with some of these characters and I am unhappy about letting them go. I've spent years with them and trying my best to convey how meaningful to me these people were. It feels like I'm losing them all over again and that hurts.

No mention of Robin.

I'll be honest and say that there hasn't been a resolution with him, I don't believe it will ever be possible and that's for the best. He's not a major character in this novel as I never communicated with him during this period, though his presence and influences are heavily there as there was no way to deny the lasting impacts he had on me. Readers might think the sound of the crickets story and its effect on me in Uncivil X was fiction, but that was one example of the very real influence he had on me. He was a major figure in my young life and you don't ever shake someone like that.

 

Any plans to write another book about your family or your life?

No. I feel like I'm still living in the period that follows Shadow's Gravity and I want to keep my privacy. I might find some inspiration from parts of it, but I would not wish to do more than that. My day to day life isn't all that interesting anyway. Writing, hiking, gardening, photography, travel, work around the house and loafing in antique shops or wherever is what my life is these days. People on my Facebook can tell you that it's terribly lame like watching old music videos on YouTube or bad photos of stuff I see alongside the road or where I walk. I collect postcards and maybe I should start sharing that hobby on Facebook. I'm not all that interested in social media. I'm still a shy person no matter how much I have written about the past parts of my life. I won't say never, I learned that lesson a long time ago, but it is very, very, unlikely that I would ever do it. I still maintain a journal, but that's for my eyes only.

All that remains of the past that I want to publish is my poetry book from the 1990s and much of that is subject matter about family and growing up. I'd like to do that this year, but I don't know if it's the right time. It's me at my most fragile. 

 

A Chris Jr. running around out there? Hmm.

 

You shared a few details about the possibility of you having a child. Do you?

A Chris Jr. running around out there? Hmm. Well, it would spoil a few things to answer that here. I answer that in Shadow's Gravity and the circumstances about that very possibility. I'm a good secret keeper, I've proven that. I'm not one to share everything about my current life on social media and I have serious concerns about the detrimental effects of what social media does to children's mental health.

 

What's one weird story in this novel?

There would have to be several or it wouldn't be my life, but I'll mention hanging out late one night at Charlie Dick's house in Nashville. Okay maybe two, how I was dragged onto the film set of Remember The Titans, which I've still not seen. I did leave out the story of  my being at 99X and how it involved a thrift store album of my favorite, Barry Manilow.

 

There are a lot of music references in your books, from names of songs that were pivotal to the stories or playing in the background of scenes. It's obvious music is important to you, so what are some of the bands or songs mentioned in this book?

 

There are several music references in this book, but hopefully fewer as I was aware of it and trying to get away from that, but since I was in radio for much of this book it was kind of unavoidable. Also, it's kind of an interactive experience for a reader. I enjoy exposing people to music that they may not have heard and may enjoy if they look it up when they read a book of mine. Did people go listen to Robbie Dupree's Steal Away after reading about it in Dweller On The Boundary? I don't know, but they should. It was one of those songs bouncing around in my little brain in the evenings when I was out running around with Robin in the twilight. Or maybe readers my age were reminded just how great the Cure's Lullaby was by having it playing while Tavin and I fumbled around in my car in a church parking lot. People could go study the lyrics to songs by The Police and see the similarities to my life.
As for Shadow's Gravity, Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark album is part of a scene with Everett in Louisville. Her songs Free Man in Paris, People's Parties and The Same Situation from that time with him capture the mood. Another band mentioned would be Pansy Division, a San Francisco gay punk band, who I got into in the mid 90s when I was going through this period of finally being comfortable in my skin for the first time ever. By the way, the guy on the album cover is from Georgia and was the last lover of William S. Burroughs and was involved with Allen Ginsberg too.

 

What is one random object like a toy that you still have from your childhood?

This toy gun. It shot those red paper caps. I used to play with it with Robin. I may have mentioned it in Dweller On The Boundary. I lost it for a time, but as a teenager I found it sticking out of the mud one day walking around the front yard.

What is something random from your childhood that you have not written about?

I loved train sets. My first train set was the Golden Eagle. There was always something with birds, wasn't there? I had a few train sets and would buy extra cars and buildings for my town at the Kessler's at Cobb Center. That store had one of the best toy departments except for the Lionel Playworld on Windy Hill Road.

 

Since I can't ever say who he was or share a photo, that is the closest I can come.

Any final secrets you care to share?

Okay, why not? When Robin left me a music video came out that June and it was like this gift to me. It was Bonnie Tyler's mega hit, Total Eclipse of the Heart, and one of the best videos ever made at the height of the MTV era. The video is set at a boy's school. One of the boys looked to my ten year old eyes like Robin. I fantasized that it was him in the video and I never moved when it came on television. I was pitifully heartbroken. He appears at the very end of the video and runs up to the group of boys already assembled. Since I can't ever say who he was or share a photo, that is the closest I can come to ever sharing what he looked like. I loved that video and took comfort in it. You can cross your heart on that. This video was also released near the time my gifted teacher wanted to send me away to private school and it shaped my idea of what it would've been like. It might be the most homoerotic video ever made too.

What is next after all of this?

I have piles of research on a Georgia murder from the 1970s that I may use for a book. I recently went by one of the locations for it and some time ago I hiked out to where the bodies were dumped. It was a spooky place. I have other ideas in various stages of development too. I am tempted to write something that is pure fiction and stretch myself. Part of me wants to write a book with 80s Atlanta punks as the main characters. People probably don't realize that there were punk clubs like 688 or the Metroplex in the eighties because that facet of Atlanta never seems to be talked about. I'm not certain what comes next, but whatever story is next it will be set in the American South, one of the most complicated and beautiful places on the planet. It has bothered me for most of my life how people get the South wrong, even people born here. There's a lot of lazy propaganda produced in the news and entertainment industry about what the imperfect South is from attitudes to culture. Without being an apologist for the South and the history before I was born, I want to try and change some of the misconceptions about what the South is.

 

Last question. What is the biggest challenge for indie writers?

Finding a book I wrote on the shelves of a Barnes & Noble bookstore was an incredible feeling. November 2020.

A lack of a promotional budget and a big publisher behind you when it comes to publicity. I'm grateful for the audience I have who took a chance on me, but of course I'd love to sell more books. Every writer wants to be read. I don't care anything about being famous or culturally important, but I do want to be read more widely and not be a niche writer. I willingly chose to be an indie knowing the challenges that come with it so I'm not complaining, but I'm mentioning it as a challenge to the business side of writing. I try not to promote myself all that much because there is something unseemly about that. Much of my promotion comes via word of mouth on social media and I'm dependent on ratings and reviews from readers on services like Amazon to help coax the the algorithms into favoring me. I wish more people that read my books would take the two minutes to rate or review me there with their genuine feedback. I have far more readers than ratings and reviews on my books and more feedback would definitely help me.

 

Thank you for reading. 

 

I Have Seen That Face Before

Oh...

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head

A mugshot is that moment for the public when a crime becomes real and a criminal is made. For the accused, it probably feels like a ceremonial performance as part of having their finger prints taken and the handcuffs placed on them. Perhaps it does not seem genuine until the bars close behind them and they are left with only their potentially guilty thoughts and a filthy shared toilet. It might emotionally sink in for them when they have been caught and the game is up. The mugshot is enough for the rest of us to understand that this is official without a need to experience the rest of it.

I have seen numerous mugshots of people I have written about in my books. Some of them, with multiple mugshots, were expected and then there was one I saw this week that shocked me. I might have expected it if it were Rowe (he has several mugshots) or English Stan (he has none). The person staring ahead in the orange jumpsuit and bad lighting with a scowl I saw for years was the real person behind one of the major characters in all of my books.

It seemed impossible. It seemed ludicrous.

Side by side I compared older photographs of them to the mugshot taken in 2023 and even overlaid them in Photoshop. It was the identical bent ear and the same messed-up eyebrow. Not that I should have needed more convincing once I looked into their eyes, I still did not believe it. I scoured the internet for two days to triple-check the information. It was as though I tried to convince myself that the tsunami I faced was only a ripple on an infinity pool caused by the breeze of a palm fan. This could not be.

There was some reason for disbelief, the last I saw of them was in the 1990s, when they resembled the dorky and youthful person I knew. They were not this scruffy, wrinkled, sun-blotched person who had let themselves go. Was I wrong? I still questioned it despite the exact match of their first, middle and last names and their date of birth.

Something else that threw me off and gave me the biggest doubt was the incorrect information about where they were raised. No, they were not raised in that state; they were raised in Paulding County. I was sure of it; I had known them since elementary school. I had slept in their bed, worn their clothes and much, much more. There was no evidence then or now that this person had a doppelganger.

My fingers kept clicking and my browser kept digging deeper and deeper down a rabbit hole. I learned that they had lied about where they were raised to cover their tracks. That lie was part of a larger scheme lasting two decades.

Emotionally it sank in for me, the information was correct. I was left dizzy in a state of unexpected disappointment. How had I gotten this person so wrong or had they changed? To call it a shock would be to call losing an arm in a gory chainsaw accident a minor scrape with a Husqvarna running wide open. Why had this person allegedly committed these felony crimes and potentially spend the rest of their life in prison? I do not understand.

It was not unexpected that the bullies and bad characters that I have written about have all gone on to become criminals of varying degrees. None of them redeemed themselves in adulthood or made the world a better place. Once a bad apple, always that, I suppose, but this person was not a bad apple. This person was one of the people I still held admiration for, albeit with a few misgivings. It was as if a worm had breached the red skin and made them rotten. This moral threshold that everyone of us have, with a few exceptions, that establishes at our most fundamental level what is right and what is wrong, was perforated. They went from an adult with a distinguished career to possibly a felon on multiple counts.

I scrambled my brain looking for markers on the highway of life that might have predicted this outcome for them.

The look in the mugshot is one I recognize when this person is seething with anger. I did see that face from them a few times, but that is not enough to convict them or say that this person will grow up to become a criminal.

I am reminded of a scene between us next to a cow pond in Dweller On The Boundary.  They throw a large rock into the water disturbing the universe. The crows are gathered in the tree tops, pacing and watching. The conversation goes somewhere I do not want. There were signs of something I did not understand in their personality and they, like many people, had a few loose connections, but not once did I believe there was anything other than a shining goodness in them that steered their decisions.

There is also an experience I have withheld about them, but I am compelled to write about it now. It is not included in the first draft of my next novel, but with these new developments, I will work it in. It seemed insignificant in the context of the times and in 1986, but now it makes more sense and takes on a bruising shade of seriousness. It could have some relevance to what became of them.

Some of the other accusations levied against them without being charged yet, but hopefully will if true, are violations of federal law. With the gift of hindsight, I can see the origins of these accusations taking root in the games we played as kids. Those inconsequential make believe games we played then carry stiff consequences if carried out by adults. How could a smart person be so dumb? This person acted like he was Peter Pan, except they knew it was not a game. I have seen the evidence of these accusations as presented by knowledgeable people in this field and it is damning.

Ethically and legally, I cannot write why they were arrested, even if it is a matter of public record or their other shady and dishonorable dealings, for fear of revealing their identity in my books. With these constraints, there is little detail I can write, but it is bad, very bad. The alleged crimes are bad enough that this person's arrest was covered on every local television news broadcast where they live. Not to offer them any defense or to minimize the crimes, but they are not violent or of a sexual nature and instead involved a very planned deception. The justice system affords them the presumption of innocence and in my heart I would like to believe they are innocent, but based on the evidence and patterns of behavior I have learned about, the allegations are probably true. This was not a one-time spur of the moment bad decision by a good person. It was a series of intentional bad choices over a long period of time by someone that had a substantial part in my young life.

I have to think maybe I saw this somewhere buried in their eyes, at the corners of their mouth or in their arrogance behind closed doors, but I did not. They always claimed to know so much about human nature and then they gave into the meaner, more desperate side of it. It upends my view of them in the past, our shared memories, what I have written about them and they are now tainted. 

If a conviction comes down before publication of my next novel, then I will address it in the epilogue, as this book was intended to tie up all of the storylines from this series. Beyond that, I will have no further comments about this person.

Season's Greetings And Christmas Cards

Some 1980s Christmas cards from WXIA-TV Atlanta that I received during my time affiliated with them from 1985 to 1990. Signed by Johnny Beckman, Guy Sharpe and other meteorologists and staff.

---

 Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, it was common to see the phrase “Season's Greetings” on Christmas cards, advertisements and other decorations, but the phrase dating back to Victorian times seems to have fallen out of usage or I seldom seem to encounter it any longer. My mother seemed to favor it for our family Christmas cards and I remember as a child seeing it the most often compared to other popular phrases like Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays. 

 

Without fail and with enjoyment, my mother sent out Christmas cards every December. Revco, Zayre, K-Mart, Richway, Rich's or from wherever she got them that year. I was there with her, going through the boxes in the aisle next to the wrapping paper, until she asked me what I thought and she decided on just the right one. Some years it was a reindeer, a sleigh, a bird or barn in the snow or Santa with a bag of toys slung over his shoulder that she chose. Sometimes we agreed and sometimes we did not.

Christmas cards from my childhood home in the 1980s.

 

The tradition was for her to retrieve the red address book from the telephone table in the living room and sit down to write out a stack of cards intended for friends and relatives. People got them even if she had not seen or spoken to them during the year; she was going to think of them for the moment it took to write their name.

 

The addresses rarely changed as people did not hop from house to house like the nomads of today seeking an upgraded kitchen and twenty car garage, except for a crazy aunt of mine who was constantly marrying, divorcing and moving. Houses are no longer homes, but investments and there are more people in Georgia than I ever would have imagined as a child. You could write my name and Route 5 Dallas, Georgia without any other numbers or a road and the mail carrier would have known exactly who I was and where I lived thirty or forty years ago. Not so today.

 

Christmas cards on a fireplace mantle in my former Louisville home. Photo by me, December 1996.

I sat next to my mother on the sofa and watched and waited for my turn in our conveyor belt Christmas card operation. Her handwriting was much prettier than mine; I am a left-hander and she was a righty, so she did the writing. My job was to stamp and seal the envelopes after she had signed the cards and filled in the address. Some television show would be on the background that neither of us cared for or in the seventies, she would have the Elvis Christmas LP from 1970 playing on the wood cabinet stereo.

No one interfered with us, as it was likely there was no one else around. When the writing, stamping and licking were done, we would drive to the post office in Dallas and I would run inside and drop them through the slots marked "Dallas Only" or "Out of Town."

A 1970s Christmas card from my great grandmother and great uncle in Visetown, Tennessee.

I do not imagine a scene such as that often plays out in contemporary life. Children have little interest in anything that is not on a phone screen and the same could be said of adults too. Christmas cards have been replaced by social media posts that sound like they were written by public relations firms and accompany an over stylized family photo in front of a Christmas tree or a summer beach vacation at Destin or Panama City at sunset with everyone dressed in white. The smiles will be wide, the hair will be blown, the sand will fill every wrinkle and the sunburn serious. Were these people stranded in the desert? After all, there are appearances to keep up and as I said to someone recently, everyone on social media appears to be happy and living the best life. Much show must be made of every moment at that very moment.

Most people of my generation and older will think of the Christmas card as an artifact of our past lives. Younger generations likely do not think of Christmas cards at all because they have probably never signed one. The Christmas card can be considered The Ghost of Christmas Past warning Scrooge to remember the innocent Christmas spirit that he possessed in his youth, lest he die miserably and sentenced to become a ghost chained up like old Jacob Marley. It might be Dickensian to hold the antiquated Christmas card in high regard or give it such powers of sentimentality. As a fan of Dickens, I fondly remember the cards as much as the parties more than I do any G.I. Joe or Star Wars action figures that I received as a present under the tree. Receiving a Christmas card meant that you mattered or were thought of, even if it was only for a moment. There was a human connection in the handwriting, the brief words written, the tearing open of the envelope and the licking of the stamp.

There is no human connection in the 'like' button or the heart icon underneath the thumb holding a screen. You might as well keep scrolling for the next video or selfie or time-wasting piece of content.

Half of the enjoyment of Christmas cards was receiving them in the mail. I liked to see the variety of cards that people chose and the handwriting styles. After opening the cards, they would be placed on the mantle above the fireplace, where they would sit until after the new year, when the decorations came down and were boxed up. While they were there for a month, I would look at them and be reminded of that person and imagine our card sitting on their mantle. The lifespan of the Christmas card was another part of the tradition. The unsatisfactory modern equivalent of social media posts cannot be perched on a mantle or satisfy my need to tear open an envelope. Their lifespan is less than a second, as it is scrolled by and never seen or thought of again. Such is contemporary digital life, where nothing endures.

 

The Lenox Square tree in 2007. Photo by me.

Similarly, Macy's killed off the Rich's Christmas tree tradition after seventy-four years in Atlanta. I have been to Lenox Square twice since Thanksgiving this year and the Christmas spirit was lacking and some of that was not seeing a Christmas tree atop the Rich's (it'll never be Macy's to me) store. It was a tradition I grew up with, even in years I did not see the tree in person at the Rich's flagship downtown store on the crystal bridge or when it moved to Buckhead, as the night of the lighting was always broadcast on television. In my lifetime until now, it has always existed and so from my perspective, it should always continue to exist. Tradition is something humans grasp onto when other aspects of life shift with the times and become unrecognizable. They are reassurances on cold, windy nights that some things still matter and are constant when little else behaves in that manner.

The last Christmas card my mother sent me four months before she died.

The season's greetings are not mailed anymore, but are more likely Instagrammed and forgotten. Traditions require too much time, thought and effort in the age of instant and constant gratification. This is how traditions fade out little by little with the passage of time and people. I still send Christmas cards and I will keep sending them until I can no longer find them in the stores or have no one to send them to.

 

Trains, Towers and Time

 

A leaning oak tree questions its existence in the fog. Photo by me, March 2023.

Some people are spring and summer people and others, like me, are fall and winter people. I will gladly accept a gloomy, cool to cold day over a blazing hot and humid day that can occur here in the northern third of Georgia anywhere from April through early October. I compare it to music: I would rather listen to the Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Echo & The Bunnymen, Nirvana or Joy Division than Aerosmith, Poison, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga or whatever passes for the computer-generated pop music these days. Do not get me wrong; I can relish a hot July day dipping my toes into a lake or squeezing hot white Florida sand between my toes, but I love the gray, damp and cozy winters of home much more.

This past March, I experienced the perfect weather day, if such is possible, like it was one of the scenes from my novel Dweller On The Boundary when I lost my dog Raven in the fog. It was an early March day as I went north into the higher elevations of the mountains. The temperatures dropped into the upper forties and drizzle made everything dripping wet. It was the type of weather that makes me want to walk forever or rest my bones by a fireplace and look at old photos.

Better times in Clarkesville, Ga. Photo by me, March 2023.

Take the last train to Clarksville
And I'll meet you at the station
You can be here by four thirty (Train)
'Cause I made your reservation
Don't be slow
Oh, no, no, no
And I don't know if I'm ever coming home.
-The Last Train To Clarksville by The Monkees.

 

The first town I loafed into was Clarkesville, no connection to that 1960s Monkees song Last Train To Clarksville. The Habersham County town of nineteen hundred residents has been bypassed by newer and bigger highways, pinching it off from the eyes and dollars of passing motorists. The last passenger train service, via the Tallulah Falls Railway, ended in 1946. The isolated situation might not make for a thriving economy, but it has preserved the town's character and identity from the newer and more cheaply built development that is devouring much of northern Georgia like a fatal disease.

 

My thoughts are not original on this topic; I share them with the late writer and Atlanta newspaper columnist Celestine Sibley, who lamented the changes during her lifetime in her beloved Sweet Apple in what was then rural North Fulton County. I, like many longtime residents of Georgia, have watched the rolling wooded hills and mountains become parking lots and cul-de-sacs with names that only remind us of the natural landscape that existed before. This is a concern that I have also written about in my novels.

 

Progress only seems to come in one shade and which is newness and not in another, which is better. The zealots of progress would likely disagree, but I could never be convinced that a metal building is more attractive than one made of brick or stone. A patch of kudzu is more attractive to my eyes than most of that ghastly and inhumane plastic-looking crap that is built today for people to live, work and play. In modern design, beauty has been sacrificed for cheap progress.

I might be wrong and overly sentimental too, so think for yourself. Those who are most certain in their opinions are most certainly wrong.

My childhood cookie jar. Photo by me, March 2023.

I poked around a couple of antique/junk shops located in a former textile mill without buying anything. I am now of the age where these kinds of shops are museums of my childhood, filled with objects I grew up with. Sometimes people from the past show up too, but that is another story for another time.

 

The blue/green glass canister above was the exact same one my mother had in my childhood home since the 1970s. My grubby little hands were always prying it open and sneaking cookies before bedtime. I was tempted to open this one and see if it smelled like the homemade oatmeal cookies she made. 

 

It is tempting to buy these unnecessary items and recreate the past. These objects set off a physical tingle and produce a smile, but it would feel wrong to have them again, like reconciling with an ex - you just know it is not going to work out no matter how good they make you feel. It is a fight sometimes to avoid succumbing to nostalgia for objects that were once a part of my life. I do not want to slip on a permanent pair of rose-colored shades that block out the negative realities of the past. Also, I do not bake cookies and have no need for a cookie jar.

 

I touched the smooth glass of the jar but did not open it. I feared disappointment that it would not release the aroma that my mind and heart hoped. My memory was more important to keep intact than to potentially spoil it. I exited the temporary haze of nostalgia and then I left Clarkesville. Stephen King's town of Castle Rock, Maine and that novel of his that I read as a teenager, Needful Things, were on my mind.

The Big Red Apple outside the old Cornelia train station. Photo by me, March 2023.

Cornelia, Ga. Photo by me, March 2023.

 

A stopover in nearby Cornelia had me standing next to a monument of a big red apple and the old train station. I do not associate Cornelia with apples in Georgia, but apparently they grow them and required a large monument to them, maybe to appease the apple gods. Who knows and I am not sure? Since the nineteen eighties, I have associated Georgia's apple industry with Ellijay and Blue Ridge where my family would buy them in the fall and I still do today. 

 

The plaza was empty in Cornelia, as I imagine it is most days; the flags flapped in the breeze, a pink magnolia showed off and the daffodils entertained themselves. No one waited for a train that does not stop there anymore, though Amtrak does make stops in nearby Toccoa and Gainesville. The passenger train that once ran through here went to Clarkesville, Tallulah Falls and into North Carolina. The leftover caboose was a prop for when or if the Instagrammers of the world find Cornelia or for an older person to explain to a child what the big red relic was. 

 

What a fine day it was to stand in the mist as my hands grew cold around my camera. I knew of a place outside Cornelia that I wanted to visit and this seemed like the ideal day to make the detour up there. I had found my destination and no train could take me there.

 

On the edge of the Lake Russell Wildlife Management Area stands a stone tower built in 1937 by the Works Progress Administration for the National Forest Service. To reach it, you drive a narrow paved road through a residential neighborhood planted on the side of Chenocetah Mountain. The tower is fifty-four feet high at an elevation of one thousand eight hundred and thirty feet above sea level. On a clear day, from the top of the tower, you could see for miles. It served the same original purpose as the metal fire tower atop Elsberry Mountain that was behind my childhood home: spotting forest fires.

This was not a clear day; this was a perfect weather day.

The fog on Chenocetah Mountain. Photo by, March 2023.

A tree indicated the way. Photo by me, March 2023.

I parked on the side of the road and could not see the tower further up the mountain through the fog. The crunch of gravel underfoot was the only sound as I went uphill. The atmosphere was eerie and the experience thrilling that I came on the perfect day. I was a boy again in the woods. There was no other world except where I was at that moment, which blurred with the past. It happens every time I set foot on a wooded trail: I am inspired. Dweller On The Boundary was born on a trail lined with Chinese privet on a hot summer's day.

Photo by me, March 2023.

Chenocetah Tower emerged in a clearing at the top, behind the gray sentinels, awaiting orders for when to begin to grow leaves again. The tower appeared like a sweet memory among the often mundane and trivial thoughts of the everyday that populate Facebook and the television news. Tell me what you really think or what is important and not some politically inspired pose for attention.

Photo by me, March 2023.

A pleasing land of drowsy-hed it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
Forever flushing round a summer-sky.
The Castle of Indolence, Canto I, VI by James Thomson in 1748. Also quoted at the opening of Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

The fog dressed the landscape in a cloak that distorted time. A person could have stood in that spot for almost the last one hundred years and it would have looked similar. In that distortion, I imagined myself calling out for my lost childhood dog, Raven, into the wall of gray. The conditions were the same as that 1980s day that I sank into the ground of Rabbit Tobacco Field. This was not a nostalgic trance, but history rattling my bones as if I needed to remember.

Photo by me, March 2023.

 

This was like walking through one of my stories or how I imagined the landscapes to be in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. If the Headless Horseman rode past, I could not see him in the dense water droplets suspended in the air. Raven could have been out there too with her jingling vet tag, but I would not know; all sound was muffled.

Photo by me, March 2023.

 

Photo by me, March 2023.

Photo by me, March 2023.

I could not climb the tower as much as I wanted to do just that. The blue door was locked tight to keep the vandals from having their way with it. The wood and stone were spared from high school sweethearts pledging eternal love and devotion on it. The tower is only open to the public one weekend a year, during the Cornelia apple festival. 

 

I admired the tower at ground level and thought about how structures of this quality are not commonly built anymore and have not been during all of my fifty years. I like the older architecture and craftsmanship, but do not confuse that with my liking older times better. My admiration for old buildings probably was spawned when I first saw the stone house of my great-grandparents in Tennessee as a child or visiting the Biltmore Estate in Asheville in the 1980s. I simply saw that when it came to buildings, the older ones appealed to me.

 

When my twenties arrived, I chose to live in some old places: a former Atlanta Ford Factory built in the 1920s and a Victorian mansion from the 1880s in Louisville, Kentucky. Living in places that old is living inside history and sharing them with the unseen past, which is kind of similar to living in an eternal fog. Sometimes in those places I caught a whiff of the scent of the past or a glimpse of it darting around a corner, but I never came face to face with it as I did as a young boy in my backyard underneath an oak tree or again much later in life.

Whatever ghosts are, I believe in them. They can exist in foggy woods and fields, creaking mansions, antique stores, words in a book, in a mind and in a heart. I carry them around with me, write about them, sometimes encounter them and try not to be haunted by them.

Photo by me, March 2023.

 

Photo by me, March 2023.

There on the foggy mountaintop, the time distortion was strong and I traveled on the perfect weather day. Despite my possible resemblance to Ichabod Crane, no pumpkins were hurled my way as I stood next to the tower with cold cheeks and damp hair. Raven still ran through my memories as black as her namesake. Time travel is not only an H.G. Wells story or that television show I loved as a kid, Voyagers!, but a real phenomenon and that can be achieved by closing one's eyes. The keys are imagination and memories. A person can go to any place or time that they can imagine or remember, but there are reservations to be considered. The past is as set as the stone in the tower and cannot be changed, as some might want. However, time travel can influence the present and future if you allow it, so be wise in making those choices.