Fiction and History

Category: From the novelists and fiction writers

  • How I was banned from the Brentwood Library

    This was Plan B for last night’s lecture at the Brentwood Library I want to thank Marilyn Prosser, Kathleen O’Dell, and Lorraine Sandstrom for inviting me here to the Brentwood Library. And I want to say what an honor it is to be on a panel with two excellent scholars with such fine books. Of…

  • One more trick to writing historical fiction: the timely metaphor

    Bill Harrison used to say to us in workshop, Block that metaphor, Block that metaphor. You could imagine that in some Golden Age back at Vanderbilt there existed sophisticated cheerleaders cruising in tasteful but devastating skirts and sweaters, chanting, Block that metaphor. If you are going to write a metaphor into historical fiction and make…

  • Borders closing: an author’s perspective

    Springfield, Missouri Borders on bankrupt chain’s closure list There is a tumult in my heart about the Wednesday (2.16.2011) announcement that Borders will be closing 200 stores, including the location in Springfield, Missouri, the store in which Moon City Press first launched my novel Morkan’s Quarry. The characters in my novel, the Morkans, owners of…

  • Maybe the sequel to Morkan’s Quarry starts like this?

    I Upon the death of the Old Morkan it was widely supposed in Springfield that his son, Leighton Shea, would quickly meet with calamity. Silent save when bossing laborers at Morkan Quarry, the young man struggled without the easy gab and foxy acumen of his late father. Those wartime comrades who hunted and killed bushwhackers…

  • Notes on Civilians in the Civil War in the Ozarks

    While I have not heard how Friday morning’s panel at the Words & Music Festival will be run, I figured I had better take some notes and share them here. I’m sure Howard Bahr, Roy Blount Jr., and Dr. Alecia P. Long will have plenty to say. 6-1 odds I won’t need any of this!…

  • More on the miracle of readers

    At the Eudora Welty Symposium, Tommy Franklin (Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, Smonk, Hell at the Breach, Poachers) said that it was a leap of faith to write a book, and an even greater leap of faith that anyone would ever read what you had made up. Perhaps the greatest leap of faith is that a…

  • What I said about optimism at the Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium 2.0

    CAMPUS OF MISSISSIPPI UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN Columbus, MS Thank you, Dean Richardson, for that warm introduction. And thank you to Kendall Dunkelberg, and thanks to your staff for all of the heavy lifting and logistics that I know will make this Eudora Welty Symposium such a success. It is an honor for the University Press…

  • What I said about optimism at the Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium in Columbus

    CAMPUS OF MISSISSIPPI UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN Columbus, Mississippi Thank you , Nora, for that introduction. And Kendall, Bridget, Tom, I am in awe of how smoothly and superbly the Welty Symposium is run. More than that I am bowled over by your students, the ways in which they gladly participate, the dreams they have shared…

  • Connecting family to fiction: Inspiration for characters can come from Yellville or Yamhill

    McMINNVILLE—Leading up to tonight’s signing at my brother-in-law’s Edward Jones office in McMinnville, Oregon, some editors and journalists have naturally asked, What is the connection of this story in your novel Morkan’s Quarry to anything in Yamhill County? When I was working with editors and agents on the book, my wife, Tammy Gebhart Yates, and…

  • How you’ll know you’ve succeeded with your reader

    McMINNVILLE—I have to admit some trepidation in coming to Oregon for a book signing for Morkan’s Quarry. The Ozarks in the Civil War has long been ignored. And civilian experience in the Ozarks during the war even more so. So now let’s carry Morkan’s Quarry to a place where readers are really far removed from…