Fiction, Lies, and Carpal Tunnel

What Is A Mother

2017-05-13T10:59:00.000-05:00

I wrote this poem on May 13, 2017 for my wife, Sharon.

What is A Mother

She's antiseptic kisses to that boo boo on your knees.

She's chocolate cake and ice cream after butterbeans and peas.

She's You have to clean your room first before going out to play.

She's the Go and ask your father part of What did your mother say.

She's the face in the window when you catch the bus to school.

She's policeman judge and jury when you break the Golden Rule.

She's the nagging voice of reason when you reach your teenage years.

She's the one who never looks away when you're hanging with your peers.

She's the warning to be careful every time you take the car.

She's the one who never rests unless she knows right where you are.

She's the hand on Daddy's elbow when you deserve a second chance.

She's the only reason ever that you saw a high school dance.

She's proud momma kisses when you run the race and win.

She's understanding patience when you're left to run again.

She's the one you would've listened to if only you had known.

She's the first one you turn to when you have children of your own.

She's good advice and council regarding things both bad and good.

She's yours to keep forever -- such is motherhood.

Walter Pigg ... a work in progress

2017-04-19T15:28:00.001-05:00

Some of you have been asking where my next book is. Since the release of The Night Train in the spring of 2012, I've released one novel a year, most of them in March or April. So why the wait? Where is number six?

Last year was a very busy year for me at my day job. I traveled quite a bit and worked a ton of overtime, so I got behind on the writing. Typically I have a pretty good handle on the final draft by the end of December, then it takes a few months of polishing, formatting, purchasing a cover, and all those other tedious things that go alone with self-publishing. This past December, the week before Christmas, I took the last of my vacation and sat down to finish my sixth manuscript. Trouble was, I didn't much like the story I had written. I agonized over how to fix it for two days, then I deleted everything but the first scene. Sixty thousand words erased with the press of one key. I basically started over and, at that point, knew I would not be publishing anything in the spring of 2017. More than that, I knew I would not be publishing something I didn't like. I will never do that.

Logan (my 14 year old genius of a son) and I recently had the following exchange:

Me: Walter Pigg is going to be my best work yet.
Logan: You ALWAYS say that.
Me: Well, if I didn't think that I wouldn't be writing it.

Will Walter Pigg be my best novel? I don't know. That will be up to you, the reader, to decide.

When will you get the chance to decide? Soon, I hope. Probably late summer or early fall. My word count is currently at 123,000 words, and the end is in sight.

Thanks for asking.

It's That Time Again

2016-06-26T12:47:00.000-05:00

Yes, I realize this novel, my fifth, has taken longer to complete than all the others (except The Night Train, my first, which took a lifetime), and I thank all of you who have patiently nudged me onward. Knowing I have readers who want that next book is one of the things that motivates me to keep up this grueling (though enjoyable) process.

Temple's Ghost is different for me. It's the first of my books not set in the South, hence the absence of southern dialect. Don't worry, I have not abandoned my roots. I'm simply trying to branch out as an author. Writing Temple's Ghost proved to be an enjoyable challenge, and one I sincerely hope you enjoy reading.

Before you ask about setting, let me admit up front that I don't know where the story takes place. Echo City is a fictional town located a hard day's drive from New York City. A handful of hours south of Detroit. I've honestly never tried to pinpoint it any closer than that because it doesn't matter. Echo City could be anywhere.

This week I released Temple's Ghost in e-book formats on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords (which distributes it to Apple, Kobo, and a host of other sites). The paperback version is in the review process and, assuming I find no issues with the proof I should receive in the mail next week, will be available by the end of June (today is June 26, 2016).

Releasing a new novel is a bit like standing naked in front of a crowded room, so here I stand, awaiting your reaction. It gets easier each time I do it, though, and that's because I have the best readers in the world.

If your local library or bookstore doesn't carry the paperback version of my books, please ask them to.

As always, I invite you to like my Facebook Page and visit my website regularly for the latest news and information.

1st Place!

2016-02-13T16:02:00.000-06:00

Kason, Gregory, and Jake

UPDATE: April 19, 2016: Kason, Gregory, and Jake competed and won 1st place at state competition today in Jackson, MS. Congratulations to them for a great job.

My previous blog post introduced you to Kason, Gregory, and Jake, who had just won first place at the district reading fair with their diorama based on The Night Train. This morning, they competed in the regional competition at Lafayette High School in Oxford, MS.

As you can probably guess by the picture, they won first place and will be competing at the state competition in April.

Congratulations!

Sharon and I, along with Logan, went to Oxford this morning to show our support to these fine young men. Since Logan is homeschooled, Sharon and I thought it would be a good opportunity to expose him to something different and give him the chance to engage with kids he doesn't know.

Ole Miss Cheerleaders (Logan is 4th from right, back row)

He seemed more interested in the Ole Miss cheerleaders than anything else, though he was excited about one of his dad's books being represented at such a large event. The cheerleaders provided the entertainment while we awaited the decisions of the judges.

The competition was stiff, but Kason, Jake, and Gregory pulled out all the stops and made their diorama stand out (it even had working lights). We got a chance to meet with them before the competition began, and presented them each with a signed copy of The Night Train. They asked a few questions about the book -- things the judges might ask them.

(l-r) Kason, me, Jake and Gregory

In all honesty, I think they remembered more details about the book than I did. I've released three novels since writing The Night Train, and one thing you have to learn to do as an author is let go of a story and focus on the next project, but I was happy to answer their questions.

After the judges had met with them, they stopped by for a chat before the long wait began. It probably didn't take nearly as long as it seemed. When the staff began placing the cards on the floor (placeholders for the winners to stand when their names were called), we knew the time had come. I'll admit to being a bit nervous, though Sharon, Logan, and I were confident they would win. Part of that confidence, I think, came from the parents we met beforehand. I distinctly remember hearing the father of one of the boys say, "they've got this." Never underestimate the value of parental support.

Chatting while we waited

Gregory, Jake, and Kason were in M division, so we had to wait while A - L took their places on the floor. Each division had three winners, with the first place winner of each division advancing to state.

As exciting as it was for me, Sharon, and Logan when their names were called, I'm sure it must've been much more exciting for them (and their parents). We hurried down to the floor to congratulate them and I heard one of them say he had been nervous. They didn't show it. Their parents have every reason to be proud of them, as do the parents of every child who competed today. I think the announcer said there were three hundred kids participating. They had to win twice to get there. I'm sure they'll win at many other things before they're through.

Congratulations Kason, Jake, and Gregory. You could have picked any book for your project and the result would have been the same. Thank you for choosing The Night Train.

Reading Spotlight - Creativity On Display

2016-02-05T18:06:00.001-06:00

Shayla Walker teaches 7th grade English Language Arts, and coaches girls basketball at Hills Chapel school in Booneville, Mississippi. Four years ago, shortly after its release, Coach Walker read my first novel, The Night Train, and decided to use it as part of her curriculum.

"I Chose The Night Train to help students understand there is a way to overcome bullying, abuse, and everyday obstacles." - Coach Walker

During the past four years, I have had the honor of speaking to a few of her classes. Meeting young people who enjoy reading is always fun. Meeting young people who enjoy reading a book I wrote is unforgettable.

In the spring semester of 2015, Coach Walker invited my wife and me to her class to judge the projects her students created based on The Night Train. It proved to be quite a task, as her students watch the video on YouTube). This year, in Mrs. Davis' class, Kason, Gregory and Jake took it one step further and created a diorama that includes not only the video, but a very detailed scene from The Night Train for the Reading Fair.

Kayson (left), Jake(right), Gregory (not pictured)

demonstrated an abundance of talent. Clearly they had paid attention to the book, because the scenes they recreated with their dioramas were very accurate. Three of her students -- Kason Whitehead, Gregory Murphy, and Jake Harris -- made a short video based on the book (

Their diorama placed 1st at Hills Chapel, then again at district. On February 13, 2016, they will participate in the regional competition in Oxford, MS.

Impressive isn't it? What if I told you they completed the project in only a week?

I'm told the train actually moves, but the rules require it to remain stationary during the competition.

Being curious by nature, I asked them why they chose The Night Train for their project instead of a book by another author. Jake said he likes the book, Kason said it is his favorite, and Gregory said because The Night Train is fascinating. Ok, I admit it was a leading question, but I love their answers.

I've been working hard to get my next novel ready for publication. The final stages of polishing and second-guessing can drain the creative juices. Seeing how creative Gregory, Jake, and Kason have been with this diorama has my brain racing again -- like when your heart beats really fast after an unexpected poke to the ribs. We all need a little nudge to keep moving in the right direction every now and then.

"We thought about it and made it happen." -- Kason

Gregory and Kason said they liked the book for its cliffhangers, while Jake liked the book's intenseness. Some of the subject matter of The Night Train is intense, but so is life.

"Students can learn to stand up for what they believe in. Don't back down, don't pity yourself, and most importantly, don't give up." -- Coach Walker

Coach Walker told me parental involvement is extremely important in a child's education. A child is more likely to become involved if he or she knows their parents are involved. Remember, your child sees you as a role model and will mimic your behavior, good and bad.

"I like to read action and mystery books." -- Gregory

Allow your child to discover their own likes and dislikes when it comes to books (as long as their selections are age appropriate). Pressuring kids to read something they don't enjoy may turn them off to reading and deny them the many benefits books provide. Reading stimulates a child's imagination and bolsters vocabulary.

"I don't read but I like books like The Night Train." -- Jake

Instead of forcing your child to read, let them see you reading. Show interest in their reading choices. Ask them to read to you from time to time.

I asked Coach Walker why she thinks reading is important. She quoted Dr. Seuss: "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."

Jayrod Nash and Arnold Wise certainly went a lot of places throughout the pages of The Night Train. While child abuse is certainly a strong theme throughout much of the book, the main message I hope readers will take from my novel is that abuse defines the abuser, not the abused. I didn't write a book about abuse ... I wrote a book about a boy who, as I came to know him throughout the many drafts, told me he was being abused, and he wanted me to tell you.

"I have always wanted to help children the way most of my teachers helped me. Seeing the expression on a child's face when something "clicks" is a wonderful feeling." -- Coach Walker

What expression will you put on your child's face? Think about it.

I hope you will join me in wishing Jake, Kason, and Gregory the best of luck at regional. Regardless what happens there, they are already winners.

Don't Doubt Me

2016-01-01T14:36:00.000-06:00

How many times have you doubted yourself? How many times have you looked yourself in the mirror and seen failure staring back?

Never? Look closer.

Often? Don't beat yourself up. You're in good company.

One of the best ways to understand human nature, and in turn ourselves, I believe, is to study the lives of people who accomplished big things. Notice I didn't say great things, or even good things. I said big things, because I believe it is just as important to study people like Hitler and Stalin as it is to study people like Washington and Lincoln. We need to understand the good as well as the bad.

Last night I watched a documentary on JFK's handling of foreign policy surrounding the Bay of Pigs fiasco and his interactions with Khrushchev in general. During their face-to-face in Vienna, the Soviet leader bested Kennedy, even bullied him, according to the only two men (the interpreters) who were in the room with the two leaders for the entirety of the summit. Kennedy left Vienna feeling as though he had failed. Behind the scenes, the man America saw as a tough leader with nerves of steel, suffered bouts of self-doubt. The reason he was able to force Khrushchev to blink during the Cuban Missile Crisis is that he didn't let that self-doubt keep him from doing what he knew to be the right thing.

After that documentary, I watched two shows investigating the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and Robin Williams. The commonality between those two celebrity icons is that they both suffered from bouts of severe depression throughout their lives. Monroe's desire to be taken seriously as an actress, coupled with her failed relationships with men, drove her to a dependance on sedatives to sleep, stimulants to wake up, and anxiety medication to cope with being awake. To believe the evidence, the woman the world still uses as the yardstick by which glamour is measured, saw herself as a failure, and doubted herself so much that she overdosed on a deadly cocktail of sedatives.

Robin Williams, though I never personally found him to be funny, is widely regarded as a comic genius. His ability to ad-lib his high energy scenes endeared him to millions of fans throughout his career. Humor, of course, is so often used as a mask that it's hardly shocking anymore to learn that so many of the great comedians are and were a basket case of mental tripwires.

Still, it's hard to imagine that someone who has achieved so much success -- whether they be a president, actor, writer, singer, etc. -- can look into the mirror and see failure. How does someone who has accomplished so much, suffer from self-doubt?

It's too common to be overlooked.

My lifelong dream has always been to become a great writer. Not just a writer, but a great writer. The closer I move myself toward that goal, the more crippling the self-doubt becomes. I've published four novels, have the fifth novel almost ready to go, and am currently working on the sixth, so I can confidently call myself a writer. In some ways I'm living my dream (I'm a writer). In other ways, that dream will always be just out of reach (that part about being great). It's the way of dreams, I suppose, and the evidence I've found by studying famous people certainly backs that up.

Life is not a Facebook status. Don't be afraid to fail.

I'm not a psychologist, but my lay interpretation of self-doubt is that it is simply a person's inner desire to be better tomorrow than he or she was yesterday. Oftentimes we hear of people writing positive messages to themselves on their bathroom mirror. Perhaps all those well-intentioned pep talk scribblings can best be summed up with one simple phrase: Don't Doubt Me.

Yes, I Built That

2015-09-12T09:24:00.000-05:00

Memory Lane

As a boy, at least in my teens, anyway, I used to bump around the yard trying to build things out of stuff I found lying around. Once I built a wheelbarrow out of some old lumber, mostly two-by-sixes, and was determined to use it that winter for lumping the firewood from the woodpile to the front porch (instead of the perfectly good metal one from the hardware store). I built it big, so as to hold a lot of wood, and it was sturdy. And heavy. So heavy, in fact, that pushing it empty took a fair amount of effort, but I was determined to use it because it was "better" than the store-bought version. Better, no doubt, because I built it.

I used my custom-built wheelbarrow despite the added work it tacked onto a chore I hated doing. In reality, it probably didn't hold a stick more than the store-bought one, but in my mind it could move mountains.

We don't get much snow in my part of Mississippi, but one day we did, and it covered the ground enough to make things good and slick. As I did every day, I dragged myself out to the woodpile in the back yard and loaded my wheelbarrow. I threw on a couple extra sticks so I wouldn't have to make so many trips. It was cold, and I wanted to get the thing over with as quickly as possible.

Loaded, I wrapped my hands around the handles -- handles I had shaped with my own hands -- and jerked upward. Something unexpected happened at that point: my feet slipped in the snow. When you're pulling upward against something solid, and you lose your footing, there's only one direction to go. Down. I didn't fall far, though, because a stick of firewood caught me -- right in the mouth. Everything hurts worse when it's cold, and that busted lip hurt pretty bad.

So there I stood. Punched in the mouth by my own creation. Lesson learned. I chopped the darned thing up into kindling that very day.

Despite the setback, I never stopped wanting to create things. Now, all these years later, I create with words. I build places and people and plots. There's more work in creating a story than in building a wooden wheelbarrow, but the rewards are greater.

I've built four novels and have a fifth under construction as I type this. I hope you'll do me the favor of checking them out if you haven't already, in which case I'd appreciate a nod in my direction to someone who may not have heard of me. And if you've read this all the way to the end, I thank you for that, too. We writers, you see, suffer from this insatiable need to be read. And read, and read, and read.

Learn more about my writing, including an assortment of buy links, at CarlPurdon.com.

Part II : About Writing Fiction: Carl & Mark's dual interview

2015-07-02T08:21:00.000-05:00

Red Eyes / Max, the blind guy

Writing novels absorbs an enormous amount of time, effort, and dedication. The overwhelming majority of writers never get rich or famous. Most of us have day jobs to pay the bills. You may ask why we do it. Why do we spend our spare time bent over a keyboard, or staring off into space building plots and characters?

Because we must. Passion not placated will eat you alive.

How does one go about writing a novel? What's the process? There are as many answers as there are writers. A few weeks ago, Mark Beyer approached me with an idea he had for a dual interview -- a glimpse behind the curtain. Two curtains, his and mine. Mark and I have been friends for a couple of years now, though we've never met. We write with different styles, we live half a world apart, but we've read each other's work and we share a deep appreciation for the written word.

A few days ago, Mark posted Part I of this interview on his blog, BIBLIOGRIND, Adventures in Writing, Reading & Book Culture. Today I follow with Part II. What's next? Anything's possible.

Thus begins Part II

RELATIONSHIPS

1. Tell us the challenge you work through to find the center of a relationship (man-woman; father-son; mother-daughter; friend-friend, et cetera) in your stories.

CARL: I think the biggest challenge is in getting the characters to react differently than I would react were I in their situation. Second is in getting them to react differently than each other. It’s so easy to let your characters mirror each other, so I have to be careful. Relationships are as much about how people deal with the other person’s flaws as with the things they find attractive.

MARK: I’m simple in nature (and action) but complex in thought. In other words, I think before I speak. That helps with relationships of any sort, but particularly the love-lust sort. Fortunately, I’ve found someone who shares those symptoms (and who is actually better at it than me). So we did the next best thing: we got married.

YOU AS AUTHOR

2. What type of books do you read most, and has that changed since you started writing your own novels?

CARL: I mostly read biographies and historical non-fiction. Writing has changed my reading habits significantly. For one thing, I have so little time for reading, and for the other, I find it almost impossible to switch off the editor when I’m reading now. Before I started writing, I read mostly classic literature because I really disliked almost everything I found on the New Release shelf.

MARK: My love for books and passion for good story has led me on as complicated a path as the stories I now write: I used to read genre fiction – sci-fi, horror, detective, historical, true-crime, mystery, espionage, to name a few – but then, at about age 30, I returned to classic literature, reading the Russians, the French, the Germans, the English, the North & South of the Americas, et cetera. I had discovered that books about relationships (b/w men & women, but also between people and society, work, government, or whatever else) had a far stronger draw to me. That, and the fact that I wanted to create art, not merely write fiction. Now I’ve backed off and can enjoy a Beach Book almost as much as Coetze or Roth, Zadie Smith or Marylin Robinson, Knausgaard or Houllebecq, Mantel or Naipaul.

From the writer’s perspective, I believe – as I’ve learned through action – that when you read good sentences, you write them; and if you read poor sentences (have you been able to get through even one insipid paragraph of Fifty Shades, or Dan Brown’s nonsense characterization?) then you will inevitably write poor sentences. This is not elitism, or even taste; this is aesthetics, grace, a love for language.

3. Who are your literary forebears that have influenced your writing?

CARL: James Fenimore Cooper, specifically THE PIONEERS, for the way he could take a page to paint a single movement and leave you wanting more of it. You do that, Mark, and I’ve always loved that type of narration, though it’s so unlike my own writing style. William Faulkner, because he was from Oxford, Mississippi, less than an hour from where I grew up. I’ve never been able to complete a Faulkner novel (I’ve tried), but I remember as a boy always being told that the only thing a Mississippi boy could become was an electrician or construction worker, or some other blue collar job. Worse, I remember believing it, even though all I wanted to do was write novels. Then, somewhere around the fifth grade, our class took a field trip to Oxford to tour William Faulkner’s home. I’d never heard of him before, and it was a turning point in my life because I knew it was possible. That may sound silly, but it was a very important thing to me. Then, later, John Grisham, also from Oxford, broke onto the scene, like lightning striking twice. John Steinbeck, because of the way he could paint a character so real you would catch yourself wondering what they were doing weeks after finishing the book. Lastly, Stephen King because of the sheer volume of material he pumped out. I’m not a fan of horror, but I absolutely loved THE STAND (the unabridged version).

MARK: Margaret Atwood, Norman Rush, and Iris Murdoch helped me to see more deeply (than my own experience) into the female mind, in terms of how to work them in the shadows of a story and bring them into the light. Writers as diverse as Nabokov, Roth, DeLillo, Eudora Welty, and V.S. Naipaul have influenced my narrative construction. As far as digging deeply into the human psyche, there is Nabokov, Dostoevsky, Murdoch, Roth, Naipaul, and Dickens.

4. What did you find most useful in learning to write? What was most destructive?

CARL: Practice, practice, practice. If I have one talent, I think it’s in being able to look at something I’ve written and say it’s crap, or that it doesn’t belong in that particular book. I’ve done some of my best writing with the delete key. The most destructive thing was early on, when I was desperate to learn how I was “supposed to write”, joining some of the writer groups online and falling for the “never do this, always do that” mantra so many writers were regurgitating. It infuriates me when someone says it’s not possible to write a good book unless you do x, y, or z. It finally dawned on me that I had never heard of a single one of these writers before joining the group. Basically, they preached mediocrity. Write to the template. I hate templates.

MARK: Reading has helped me the most, and then emulation: of sentences, paragraphs, pace, character portrayal, even vocabulary. On the other hand, teachers and “methodology” had, for a time, put themselves in the way. Attending school was, mostly, a waste of time; I had already known the important parts of storytelling, which I only needed to practice. On the other hand, getting an MFA has opened doors across the globe that would not have even shown themselves. The most useful thing for a writer is to have a friend or two who act as “first readers” and tell you what they could seeing working, and what they didn’t understand, about the story.

5. What are some day jobs you have held? How has any influenced you as writer, or for a specific book?

CARL: I’ve had three jobs in my life. First, I worked as an electronics technician repairing cash registers, copy machines, and office equipment. It was my first real exposure to people outside my own circles. I quickly learned that many, many, people are assholes behind the curtain. I hated it. Second, I worked as an electrical maintenance technician in a tire plant. It was hot, brutally hot at times, and nasty work, but I enjoyed it and learned so many of the skills which brought me to the job I hold now. Third, now, I am a programmer for a systems integrator. We automate industrial processes. I enjoy that, too, though I wouldn’t mind falling into a full time writing gig. The job I have now involves a fair amount of travel, so I’ve gotten to see different places, different cultures, and dispel the myth that there are no rednecks north of the Mason Dixon line.

MARK: I’ve worked with words and language for my entire working life (even as a paperboy!), first in advertising, then in publishing (textbooks, careers books, and library curriculum-related books, including history, the sciences, sports how-tos, biography), and as a writer of books, journalism (literary and art reviews; news features and travel). Now I teach English as a Second Language to European business professionals; I’m a “Language Consultant” more than a teacher, and I enjoy it. The most effect these jobs have had on my writing is in having discovered so many different people to use as characters; a colorful, mellifluous, malodorous band of humans any writer would be happy to meet … and then grind up for story.

6. ONE FOR CARL: As of today, you've written four books in four years -- successful stories, and well received -- but you're not a "young Turk" writer. Where have you been keeping your talents?

CARL: As I’ve said many times, I “knew” I would write novels when I was five. My memory of that is very distinct. I suppose it just took me a very long time to actually do it. I had a lot of things to sort out, and I was so brutally impatient that I couldn’t imagine starting something I couldn’t finish in a day or two, so I put it off. I never once stopped “knowing” I would do it. Now here’s where I may sound a bit off kilter: I was so certain I would write novels that I bounced through life thinking nothing could happen to me because I hadn’t fulfilled my purpose yet. One day I looked around and realized I was 40, and decided I’d better stop daydreaming and actually put my shoulder to it. It took much longer than I ever imagined, because it was much harder than I ever imagined. In some ways I wish I had started sooner, but the simple truth of the matter is I wasn’t ready yet. I didn’t have the kind of stories in me that I needed to write.

CRAFT

7. What cultural value do you see in writing/reading/storytelling/etc.?

CARL: Reading probably saved my life a time or two because it allowed me to escape reality when life grew heavy. Books are where I discovered at a young age that I wasn’t alone in the things I thought, or the feelings I had (some of which scared me). Storytelling has great value to me because my mother’s side of the family had some gifted storytellers who influenced me quite a bit, though I didn’t realize it at the time. My uncle Charles, for example, showed me that you can tell tragic stories (he was a rifleman in Vietnam) with humor and sarcasm. Sad stories don’t have to be sad to get the message across. Writing is a way for me to give back.

MARK: Any artistic craft is a study in the self, be it society-self or family-self or political-self or TV-watching-self or art-self or individual-self. I think that when people deliver themselves to art, in any form, they accept a challenge to look inward. That kind of relationship invigorates humanity; this is needed more today than in the last 200 years, I believe.

8. ONE FOR CARL: Your newest novel, RED EYES, is the sequel to THE NIGHT TRAIN. What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you feel you’ve achieved them?

CARL: A couple of schools that I know of use THE NIGHT TRAIN as part of their curriculum, so I’ve been lucky enough to be invited to speak to some of those classes. After the first event, every single student in the class wrote me a letter asking me to write a sequel. Every time I spoke to a class, several of the kids asked for a sequel. People sent emails, Facebook messages, and even a few phone calls asking me to do a sequel. I resisted because sequels so often fall short. When I finally decided to do it, I wanted it to be a stand-alone book that complimented, but didn’t rely on, the original. I think … hope … I accomplished that. One thing I did fail on, though, is that I fully intended to write a book free of any bad language so those kids could read it in class. One of the teachers, after reading RED EYES, said she didn’t think she could read it to her class because of the language. She asked why. I told her I tried, but the characters refused to listen to me, and that’s the truth.

9. What do you think most characterizes your writing?

CARL: Reality, I hope. I write about fictional people in real-life struggles.

MARK: The status of a relationship over time. I think most people take this for granted, especially when it relates to family. But any relationship (friendships) has two sides, and both sides must be active for that relationship to last.

10. ONE FOR MARK: What one message do you hope your readers take from Max, The Blind Guy?

MARK: If there are some temptations you are able to resist, then you’ll be able to see yourself in a wholly unique way as you lead yourself towards an inevitable death.

WORK IN PROGRESS

11. What are you working on now? Where has the story come from?

CARL: I'm 40k words into a novel about a writer who has come home to his mother's funeral with two failed novels (after three best-sellers) and a pending divorce weighing him down. He hopes to spend a few days enjoying his local celebrity status, but the discovery of a mysterious trunk in his mother's attic turns everything on its head. It's different from my other books, mostly in the fact that the characters aren't Southern (I actually don't identify the location). Of course it could be completely different two months from now.

MARK: I am working on the narrative voice and characters for a novel about a person’s life, as it moves forward, long after being involved in a school shooting (hint: not as a victim). It’s also the story between Earnest and Charlotte, and why men and women do as they do. I found this story within The American Experience.

* * *

To read Part I of this interview, click here.

Mark's new novel is now on sale: “Max, the blind guy” is the story of Max and Greta Ruth, their 40-year relationship, and all the demons that show up as they find that life rarely goes according to plan. This book is available in print at Amazon.com and the digital edition is available as a serialized novel— 12 parts, published every fourth week. Come by MarkBeyer : Author to read an excerpt that you won’t find at on-line bookshops.

What Beauty was published in 2012. It’s a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.

The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.

Carl has four novels, all available in e-book and paperback. His first, The Night Train, is the story of Jayrod Nash, a boy tragically abused by his father, neglected by his mother, and bullied at school. When he and his only friend, Arnold, stow away aboard a freight train, they fall into the hands of a hobo named Farley, who guides them on a cross-country adventure that forces them to become men.

Norton Road, published in 2013, is the story of Oscar "Pap" Jones, an eccentric old man who declares war on the furniture factory next door to his rural Mississippi home. Leading a series of after-hours raids, he forces his nemesis -- the county's most elite citizen -- to hire an unscrupulous security guard to protect his business interests, resulting in a deadly feud that rocks the community.

Blinders, published in 2014, follows Dale Criss as he steps out of Parchman Penitentiary determined to avenge the wrongful conviction that cost him twenty-five years, but the people who think him guilty have ideas of their own.

Red Eyes, published in 2015, is the sequel to The Night Train, and finds Farley Milo living in Atlanta as a fry cook going by the name of Frank Mayo. When an old acquaintance shows up with information on the abduction of one of the boys he traveled with in The Night Train, Frank is reunited with Jayrod and lured into a cross-country game of cat and mouse.

Dual Author Interview

2015-06-30T11:18:00.000-05:00

Mark Beyer

Carl Purdon

Fellow author Mark Beyer approached me a while back with an
idea for a dual interview -- two authors with very different writing styles answering the same questions. It was a lot of fun and I think you'll find it interesting, so hop over to Mark's blog and check it out.

I'll post part II of the interview on this site in a couple of days.

Review: The Wedding Circle

2015-06-09T18:56:00.000-05:00

Mississippi author, Ashton Lee, continues his Cherry Cola Book Club series with this third installment, The Wedding Circle.

Maura Beth Mayhew has her hands full planning her wedding to Jeremy McShay just as her dream of building Cherico, Mississippi's new state-of-the-art library reaches the ground-breaking stage, but trouble is in the offing when her New Orleans socialite mother turns up her nose at the idea of her daughter getting married on the deck of a cabin in a town she can't even find on a map. As if that weren't enough to worry about, Maura Beth's not-so-favorite councilman tries to sneak in a last minute change to the library's design that threatens to ruin the entire project. As always, she turns to the charming members of the Cherry Cola Book Club for advice and support.

Fun and drama unfold when Maura Beth invites her parents to Cherico to see the town and meet Jeremy's family.

The cast Lee assembled to make up the Cherry Cola Book Club is superb, as is his ability to capture the flavor of Old South customs and language. It seems every character has a hand in the plot, and there's plenty going on to keep the reader wondering what will happen next.

* * *

Ashton Lee was born in historic Natchez, Mississippi, into a large, extended Southern family which gave him much fodder for his fiction later in life. Ashton inherited a love of reading and writing at an early age as a result of watching his father, who wrote under the pen name of R. Keene Lee, work as a writer and editor in New York right after WWII. At the University of the South, Ashton majored in English and studied Creative Writing.

Ashton lives in Oxford, Mississippi, a university town which gave us William Faulkner and John Grisham. Readers can like Ashton Lee at: Facebook.com/ashtonlee.net.

Published by Kensington Publishing Corp., New York, NY.
Available on Amazon.

Making A Difference With Books

2015-04-15T11:55:00.001-05:00

Tokalopulli -- "an old crossing place"

Hundreds of years ago, the Chickasaw Indians traveled through what is now Pontotoc County Mississippi on their way to and from the Chickasaw Bluffs (Memphis, TN). At one point along the way, their trail intersected another trail from the south used by the Choctaws. An old crossing place.

To my knowledge, the Indians didn't have books back when they walked the Toccopola Trail, but if they had, they could have stopped off at the Toccopola Community Center and exchanged those books for books of equal value, with no requirement to return them. Okay, so that's historically inaccurate, but it makes a good segue into present-day Toccopola, and the good work being done by the Toccopola Homemakers Club.

With a population of 254, the town isn't quite big enough for a full-fledged public library (they have a good one a dozen or so miles to the east in the town of Pontotoc), but that didn't stop Margaret Ratliff, Harley Ann Thorne, Mary Frances Stepp, Melba Edwards, and the other members of their club from making books available to those with restricted travel as well as to those who simply like the idea of exchanging fiction with their friends and neighbors.

Margaret and Harley Ann

The Book Exchange began as a yearly project for the Homemakers Club. They liked the idea of offering a free service to the community while promoting literacy. As the idea took root, the members gathered books from their personal collections or purchased new books in order to stock the shelves their husbands would build with donated lumber and labor. Most southern men can drive a nail and operate a circular saw, especially when their wives ask them to.

Thanks to the mayor and board of aldermen, they were allowed to convert a small office in the community center to use as their library. Later, as their inventory of books outgrew the small room, two of the husbands built rolling bookshelves, allowing the library to expand into the larger meeting area during operating hours.

On the first Saturday of every month, from 9 AM to 11 AM, the Book Exchange opens for business. Margaret and Harley Ann
usually arrive early to roll the shelves out and lug the boxes of books from the tiny library to the tables in the meeting area. The exchange has between one and two thousand books now, and routinely donates books to nursing homes, assisted living centers, The Salvation Army, Goodwill, and Sanctuary Hospice House in order to keep their inventory manageable.

"If we know of someone who is disabled or ill, we will take some books to them or send them by their neighbor," says Margaret.

Toccopola Book Exchange receives no outside funding. All expenses are paid by the Homemakers

Club. The town provides the space free of charge because the mayor and aldermen realize the value of providing literary services to its citizens.

On a typical Saturday, the Book Exchange sees between ten and fifteen people. While that may not

sound like a lot, by my math, it is roughly 6% of the population participating on a regular basis.

The Homemakers Club won first place at State the year they started the Book Exchange, then followed it up later by winning first place for the Drive-thru Book Bank project on the corner near the Betty Allen Monument. Who was Betty Allen you ask? Google that one. Toccopola, you see, is as rich in history as it is in present-day community service.

The Book Exchange is more than an exchange of books. It's the exchange of fellowship and good will among neighbors. How can you help? By using the service. Exchanging books keeps the library alive.

What can you do to serve your community?

Child Abuse Prevention

2015-04-11T09:02:00.002-05:00

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. Shouldn't every month

be? Every day? Almost everyone either knows an abused child or suspects they might, or has at some point in their life. Abused children don't advertise it. Just because you don't see bruises doesn't mean everything is fine. So when is it time to interject yourself? To become involved?

There are many forms of child abuse. A myriad of reasons why, but no excuse. Not a single excuse for causing the abuse or for allowing it to continue.

As you may know, my first novel, The Night Train, deals heavily with child abuse. Young Jayrod Nash is terribly abused by his father, neglected by his mother, bullied at school, and sometimes chided by his fourth grade teacher. Now before you click away, this post is not a commercial for my book. I mention it because I've received so many comments from people telling me the book has either helped someone they know, or would help if only they knew to read it. One small disclaimer: I didn't write The Night Train to lecture on the ills of child abuse. In fact, the book doesn't lecture at all. Jayrod Nash is a boy on an adventure, and he just happens to be abused. The events in the book occur as a result of his trying to escape the life he is becoming to realize isn't normal. You see, it all began when I started asking myself if abused children -- kids who know no other way of life -- actually understand how wrong their situation is. So, the book takes the reader into Jayrod's days and nights through his eyes, interpreting events and situations as he sees them.

One of the highlights of my writing career has been going to schools and speaking to kids. Inevitably, in every single instance there's been at least one child who fit the profile. After one such visit I received a letter from a seventh grader telling me she saw herself in Jayrod. It was heartbreaking, and I admit I struggled with what to do with that information. Ultimately, I contacted the teacher, who followed procedure and shared the information with the principal. Privacy laws prevent me from knowing what happened after that, but that little girl thanked me for writing the book. If I've accomplished nothing else with my writing, I think I helped that little girl to at least know she is not alone.

That's important -- knowing you're not alone.

Another time, a young man approached me at an event and introduced himself. He very nervously shook my hand and told me (his voice cracking) that he felt like Jayrod. Words can't describe the mix of emotions I felt. Thinking I had helped ... helpless to do more.

You are not alone.

Enough with the commercial. Just to prove that my feelings on abused children didn't manifest themselves just to sell a book, I would like to share with you a poem I wrote when I was a teen.

   THE CRIME OF SILENCE

              by Carl Purdon

Through cries and screams and sobbing eyes

our children beg to be believed.

How long until we realize?

This pain they feel must be relieved.

So many lost along the way.

Graves and jails lock them in.

The guilty ones still free to prey,

on innocence with their sins.

The teacher sees the child alone,

shy and scared while others play.

Suspecting things not well at home,

she wants to help but looks away.

The preacher gives his message clear

"Spare the rod and spoil the child".

He fails to say "Let's hold them dear,

with patient heart and tempers mild."

The neighbor hears the loud abuse

and sees the marks on her tiny face.

He has no proof so there's no use

butting in is not his place.

The doctor mends the broken arm,

while bruises tell the nasty truth.

He knows inside what caused this harm,

but writes it off as part of youth.

The men we send to make our laws

ignore this truth - so hard to face.

And we with votes must see their flaws,

send someone else to take their place.

We seek a place to lay the blame,

while our children take another blow.

When another dies - the cause the same,

we swear to God we didn't know.

Child abuse is not private business. It's not the type of thing we should glance away from and pretend we don't see the signs. I'm no expert on the subject. I'm not a doctor, or a psychologist. The only degree I have is in electronics, but I do have some common sense. I suspect you do as well.

To learn more about child abuse and what you can to to help, I strongly urge you to visit child welfare.gov today.

Remember The Alamo -- but don't forget where you parked!

2015-03-29T12:54:00.000-05:00

Monday, March 23, 2015 began as a special day for us. First, and most importantly, it marked the 14th anniversary of the day Sharon and I got married. It was also the release date for my fourth novel, Red Eyes.

Flashback to Sunday. We left Beaumont, Texas after driving all day Saturday from our home in Pontotoc, Mississippi. We arrived in San Antonio in the early afternoon without hotel reservations (our version of free-ranging) and drove downtown for a glimpse of Monday's destination, The Alamo and Riverwalk. I'm a huge fan of history, so visualizing myself standing in the mission where Davy Crockett died, along with so many other brave men, had me excited.

Downtown San Antonio, for those of you who have never experienced it, is a traffic nightmare. I've driven in my share of big cities, but I quickly found myself flustered and grouchy. It was like being thrown into a giant maze with hundreds of other vehicles all fighting for a way out. Not a problem, I told myself, because Monday will be all about walking. Just park the car and set out on foot.

Now back to Monday.

The weather in Texas was beautiful. Spring had popped out all around us. Birds sang and warbled, and darted from ground to branch and down again with little regard for the humans around them. I parked the car in the first public parking area we came to once we exited the freeway onto Alamo Drive. No way was I going to ruin my mood so early by throwing us back into the maze just to save a few steps. As we left the parking lot, I told Logan and Sharon, in a half-hearted manner, to remember where we parked. Logan looked up and saw Marriott on a tall building to our right and said we could just look for that. It seemed logical enough to me. The only other thing that registered with me was that the parking lot belonged to a Presbyterian church. I remember thinking it was a good way for a church to make money by renting out their parking lot during the week.

First let me say I was somewhat disappointed in The Alamo. At the risk of offending Texans, I found it to be severely lacking in historical upkeep. Pictures weren't allowed inside the mission (I gave them the benefit of the doubt that there is some valid reason for that). Inside the mission were display cases of old guns, and a lot of tourists. So many tourists you couldn't really stop and reflect on the historical significance of the place. What disappointed me most, however, was the lack of information about the battle. Other than a row of markers bearing the names of the fallen, I didn't see anything about the battle. Nothing.

Upon exiting the mission, we entered a beautiful garden with flowers and benches and birds (lots of birds). What I had expected to see was some authenticity. The garden made for a nice relaxing stroll, but it truly disappointed this history buff.

Not to be daunted, we bought a few souvenirs and headed for the Riverwalk to spend the remainder of the day strolling along the San Antonio River, not knowing that, though the Riverwalk is every bit as beautiful as the brochures make it out to be, navigating it is a bit like driving the streets downtown. A person can easily walk in circles. One thing Logan noticed first was that the maps posted along the way all had the "You Are Here" red dot in the legend, but not a single one we saw had the red dot on the map, so we had to try and figure out where we were by looking around and finding intersecting streets (which was not always easy to do). Still, walking in circles wasn't so bad because we had no particular destination in mind. Our goal for the day was to relax and enjoy.

We ate a nice lunch at a steakhouse, then took a riverboat tour. The boats looked crowded, and let me tell you they were. We were packed in like sardines, making it impossible for me to fully enjoy the ride. What could have been a very relaxing hour was made uncomfortable because the people running the tour shoved us in knee-to-knee, shoulder-to-shoulder, back-to-back, while other boats sat empty. For someone who dislikes crowds, it was hard to pay attention to the beautiful surroundings while trying to keep my knees from rubbing against those of the man sitting across from me. All was not lost, however, because our tour guide was a delightful man named Alfred, who intertwined bits of his history with that of the city. Alfred was one of those people born to interact with strangers. As we twisted and turned along the

river, we learned that Alfred was born and raised in San Antonio. He personally witnessed many of the buildings being built, or remodeled. His pride in both the city and his job left no doubt he absolutely loved what he was doing. I remember looking back at Alfred and thinking, it doesn't matter how much money a person has, or how much they have traveled the world, as long as they are happy.

Back on solid ground again, we continued walking in search of nothing but the joy of strolling as a family one story beneath the busy streets of downtown San Antonio. There's a certain peacefulness in not having a destination, especially when your daily routine so often revolves around scheduled places to be and deadlines to meet. We found humor in the fact that a man approached us and told us there were restaurants all around us, then frowned that he normally gets $1.25 for that information. I mean, how could we not know we were surrounded by restaurants?

As I said in the opening paragraph, Sharon and I were celebrating our anniversary, so a carriage ride seemed the perfect way to top off a day of walking. Neither of us had ever ridden in a horse-drawn carriage before, so that made it even more special. Our driver was very nice. He told us bits of history as we wound along the streets, but he didn't bombard us with talk. Those several minutes of sitting beside my wife, listening to the clop of the horse's hooves on the pavement, was truly the highlight of my day.

Remember that part about me telling Logan and Sharon not to forget where we parked? After the carriage ride, we set out in search of our car. It was getting late and the streets were mostly empty. Logan reminded us of the Marriott hotel, so we found that word in the skyline and headed toward it. Nothing looked

familiar, then we saw another Marriott in another direction, and had no idea which one was which. Walking the streets proved as confusing as driving them. Our feet hurt. We were exhausted. We walked toward one Marriott and realized it couldn't be the right one, so we headed toward the other one, only to find that it didn't look right either. I remembered the part about the parking lot belonging to a church. A Presbyterian church. Out comes my iPhone and Google Maps. To my dismay, there were about five Presbyterian churches in the area, all in different directions. I was starting to get concerned.

Let me pause here to say that I have a few recurring nightmares, one of which is that I leave some event and can't find my car. In the dream, I walk in every direction, trying to remember where I parked, frantically searching. I never find my car in that dream. As we walked the streets, tired and aching, I feared that dream might become reality. I tried to put up a brave front for my wife and son. They depended on me to protect them. We walked.

When I tell you this next part, it's important for you to understand how adverse I am to asking directions, or for help. I'm more likely to leave a store empty-handed than to ask someone if they have what I'm looking for. I'll drive and drive, refusing to stop and ask someone for directions far longer than I should.

As we walked down yet another empty street, Sharon told me she smelled fresh paint. So did I, though I hadn't realized it until that moment. We glanced to our right and saw freshly painted graffiti on the side of a box truck parked at the curb just feet from where we stood. At that moment it hit me how vulnerable we were. Hundreds of miles from home, lost and afoot.

One thing I had noticed all day was the almost total lack of a police presence in the Alamo Plaza. I had made up my mind to flag down the first police officer I saw long before we spotted him coming toward us. He turned into a parking lot and parked with his lights off. I approached him and told him our plight. At first he seemed disinterested to the point that I thought he wasn't going to offer to help at all. Yes, I had noticed his hand move to his holstered gun, but that didn't bother me. He had every right to be suspicious of someone approaching his car in a dark parking lot so late at night. He asked me a few questions, such as what street did I park on, how did I enter the downtown area, which direction did I arrive from. In the end he basically told me he didn't know. I left dejected, feeling almost hopeless. My last resort had been to ask a policeman for help, and here he was sending me away with only a point in a direction toward where there might be a church.

I collected Sharon and Logan and we started out again. I saw the concern in her face when she asked if he was going to help us and I told her no. We walked less than half a block before the police car appeared beside us. The officer called me over and told me he had located a Presbyterian church on Alamo Drive (he was looking at google Maps on his phone). He told me which streets to take, then drove away.

Roughly ten minutes later, Sharon spotted the church. Nothing about it looked familiar, but there appeared to be a parking lot about two blocks to the rear. It was dark, so we couldn't tell for sure. As we walked, things began to look familiar. We entered the parking lot and Logan noticed the Marriott sign in big red letters high above. A few steps later we saw a black car with a Nissan emblem in the grill, but I tried not to get my hopes up in case it proved to be another dead end. Not until we reached the car and I saw all of our clutter inside did I breathe that sigh of relief. Few things have ever felt so good in my life as pressing the button on that door handle and hearing the thunk of the lock disengaging.

As we drove away, I thought about the homeless people we had seen earlier in the day, especially the one I had given money to, and thanked God to be as fortunate as I am.

March 23, 2015 was indeed a special day. My anniversary. The release of my new book, and the day I hopefully put one of my recurring nightmares to rest. Been there, done that.

It's Here! Red Eyes

2015-03-23T00:30:00.000-05:00

I never intended to write a sequel

Since its release, The Night Train has received more reviews and triggered more reader comments than my other two novels combined. I have had the honor of speaking to middle school students who read The Night Train as part of their curriculum, as well as to teachers (retired and active) who have told me it should be required reading for all middle school students because of its subject matter.

Again and again, readers have repeated two comments: it should be a movie, and I should write a sequel. I can’t do anything about the movie request, but there came a point when I felt I could no longer dismiss the second request without failing the very people who have made these past few years so special — my readers.

So often sequels fail to live up to the original. When I decided to do this, I made a commitment to write a novel that can stand on its own merit. I wanted readers who haven’t read The Night Train to enjoy the full experience of reading a novel that is not part of a series, while not including too many spoilers should they choose to go back afterward and read The Night Train. At the same time, I didn’t want to subject those who have read The Night Train to excessive repetition of the original story. Striking that balance proved to be the most difficult part of creating Red Eyes.

A word of caution to parents: Red Eyes is not a children's book. While it does not contain gratuitous profanity (I never use the F-word or GD in any of my writings) or excessive sexual content, some of my characters do use some bad language. Since some people considered The Night Train to be a YA novel, and since so many young teens have read it, I feel the need to be clear that Red Eyes is written for an adult audience. My advice to parents is this: read it, then decide.

I know what you're going to ask: If a primary reason you wrote Red Eyes was because so many middle school students asked you to, why did you not write it to fit the YA category? To be perfectly honest, that is exactly what I set out to do, but as with all of my novels, the characters took over and I found it too hard to restrain them. That may sound silly, but that's exactly what happened.

People often ask me which of my novels is my favorite. My answer has always been, Norton Road. The reason? I fell in love with the characters. While it's too early to know how readers will react to Red Eyes, my gut tells me this is my best work to date. Why? Again, it's the characters. To put it simply, the cast of Red Eyes feels like family to me after a year of wrestling them for control of the story.

So what now? Hopefully, for you, it will be reading Red Eyes and enjoying it enough to tell your friends, your co-workers, your Facebook community, and the rest of the world by leaving a review on Amazon (reviews are an author's lifeblood). For me, it's working on the manuscript that will become my fifth novel, but more on that later.

Red Eyes is available on Amazon for your Kindle or in paperback format. If you would like a signed copy, visit my website and fill out the request form, or drop me a note at info@carlpurdon.com.

Come interact with me on Facebook and Twitter. I'll leave the door open.

Promoting Mississippi

2015-02-22T20:57:00.000-06:00

The first time I met Patricia Neely-Dorsey, she gave me advice. I was attending my first event as an author -- an open house at our local library. I had copies of my brand new book, a pen for signing, and a terrible case of nerves. She sat at a nearby table looking every bit the professional. Calm as a cucumber.

I've gotten to know Patricia better during the three years since that first meeting. If you asked me to sum Patricia Neely-Dorsey up in one word, that word would be positive.

Patricia has dedicated herself to promoting a positive image of Mississippi to her fellow Mississippians and to the rest of the world. Let's face it, our state doesn't always get the greatest reviews. If you listen to outside sources, you might think Mississippi has nothing to offer. If you listen to Patricia, you'll be reminded that Mississippi gave the world William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Elvis Presley. In her poem, Meet My Mississippi, she describes:

Sprawling beaches

Along the Gulf Coast shore

One blues man's crossroads

And inspiration for more;

An abundance of history

Tradition and folklore

Warm front porch welcomes

With a wide open door;

In January 2015, Patricia was recognized as a Goodwill Ambassador for the State of Mississippi by Governor Phil Bryant. The proclamation reads:

KNOW YE, that the Governor of the State of Mississippi in the name and by the authority of the people of said state as vested in him by the Constitution and Laws of the State of Mississippi reposing special recognition for distinguished accomplishments , does hereby recognize:
Patricia Neely-Dorsey Mississippi Author and Poet as a GOODWILL AMBASSADOR for the State of Mississippi in appreciation for the poems Reflections of a Mississippi Magnolia-A Life in Poems" that she describes as a "celebration of the south and things southern" and "My Magnolia Memories and Musings- In Poems " in which her writings continue her celebration of the south and promote a positive Mississippi.

In addition, she was recognized with an official resolution by the state's House of Representatives.

OFFICIAL RESOLUTION-STATE OF MISSISSIPPIAdopted January 19, 2015A resolution commending and Congratulating Talented Poet and Native Mississippian , Patricia Neely-Dorsey for her many achievements as a writer and extend best wishes for many more years of successWHEREAS Patricia Neely-Dorsey is not only a talented poet, who is loved by many , she is also a native daughter of Mississippi and WHEREAS she is a 1982 graduate of Tupelo High School in Tupelo , Mississippi , and she received a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from Boston University in Boston , Massachusetts and WHEREAS , after living for almost 20 years in Memphis, Tennessee working in the mental health field , she returned to her hometown of Tupelo, Mississippi in August 2007, andWHEREAS, Mrs. Neely-Dorsey published her first book of poetry Reflections of a Mississippi Magnolia-A Life In Poems in February 2008 and her second book My Magnolia Memroies and Musings -In Poems , was published in February 2012 and WHEREAS. , she continues to live in Tupelo with her husband James, and son Henry and miniature Schnauzer Happy , and she is a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc, an avid reader andpassionate writer and WHEREAS, Mrs, Neely-Dorsey has always considered herself a "Goodwill Ambasador" for Mississippi and the South , and she believes that we can bridge many gaps of misunderstanding across regional , racial , cultural , generational and economic lines by simply sharing our stories andWHEREAS, it is the policy of the House of Representatives to commend the success of talented , humble, hardworking , Mississippians, such as Mrs. Neely-Dorsey , who have earned positive recognition and who claim their Mississippi heritage proudly with a badge of honor throughout this great nation :NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI , That we do hereby commend and congratulate Mrs. Neely-Dorsey for her many accomplishments and extend best wishes to our native daughter for many more years of tremendous success .BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED That copies of this resolution be furnished to Mrs. Patricia Neely-Dorsey and the members of the the Capitol Press Corps.

Being a Goodwill Ambassador is more than recognition to Patricia Neely-Dorsey. To her it is an opportunity to do what she does so well -- promote the state she holds dear. Our state has a state bird, a state tree, a state flower and a state song. What it does not have is a state poem. Join me in helping Patricia rectify that omission by signing a petition to have her poem, MEET MY MISSISSIPPI, officially declared state poem by our legislature.

When I asked Patricia why having her poem adopted as the state poem is so important to her, she said:

"I want to use my poem "Meet My Mississippi " to help teach the children of our state ( and people of all ages ) some important things about Mississippi in a way that can be easily remembered/recalled.
The state song, the state motto, the state tree, the state bird, and the state capitol are all included in the poem ... along with other famous landmarks and people of Mississippi."

How can you help? First, sign the petition. Second, contact your state representative and ask him or her to vote to adopt Meet My Mississippi as the state poem when it comes up for consideration. Third, share this with your friends, family, and acquaintances. Lastly, you can contact Patricia Neely-Dorsey on Facebook, Twitter, or her blog and let her know you support her efforts.

Deception -- A Short Story

2015-02-22T18:33:00.003-06:00

Ma Frazier died for three days. Hard days. Days filled with groaning and wailing and profanities above and beyond her occasional hells and damns. Reverend Thomas admonished her to maintain her dignity, but Ma kicked at him with her good leg and told him to shove dignity up his ass. The good reverend slipped from the room and joined the men on the porch.

Uncle Doyle sat barefoot in a wooden swing that hung from the rafters of the tin roof by chains. His belly spilled over his belt and pushed out the tail of his shirt. Ben stood against the corner post at the far end of the porch, chewing on a piece of weed he had pulled from Aunt Molly's row of azaleas. He and Uncle Doyle ran a junkyard together and had been friends since grade school.

Conversation fell away when the preacher came out. A red pickup truck rattled up the gravel road and disappeared over the hill, leaving a thick brown cloud of dust in its wake. Over the next couple of minutes, the dust cloud drifted across the yard and added another layer of brown to everything it touched.

The screen door opened and Aunt Molly stepped out, hair disheveled, eyes tired. She took her first breath of fresh air in days, savored it, then sat beside her husband in the swing.

"Momma finally calm down?"

She took Uncle Doyle's hand and gave it a squeeze, then broke the news that his momma had passed. Reverend Thomas led them in a prayer. Aunt Molly and Uncle Doyle sobbed. Ben rubbed the back of his neck because the prayer dragged on too long.

"Amen."

"That was beautiful," Aunt Molly said.

"You have a way with words," said Uncle Doyle.

Ben snorted and spat into the azaleas.

"Your mother confided in me before she got bad," the reverend said after a while. He raked a partially decayed dog turd off the porch with the side of his brown loafer. It hit a pink flower, then dropped through the leaves to the dirt. "I waited until she passed to tell you because that's what she asked me to do."

"You've got some turd on your shoe, Preacher," Uncle Doyle said. His hands twitched because he couldn't get the bottle from the cabinet by the stove with the preacher around. Alcohol didn't own Uncle Doyle but it borrowed him on occasion.

"Did you hear what I just said, Doyle?"

"I know what you're gonna say," Uncle Doyle said. "Momma got on me all the time for not going to church regular."

"That's not it."

Ben left the corner post and joined the group. "Some souls just ain't worth saving, Lester."

"Ben!"

"Don't Ben me, Molly dear. Me and Doyle and the good reverend used to stomp these back roads together."

"I'm a different man now," the reverend said. "I'm like the thief on the cross. Redeemed in the Glory."

"Save it for the flock, Lester."

"Don't mind Ben," Aunt Molly said. "He don't mean nothing."

The preacher chuckled. "He don't bother me, Molly. I know where I've been. More importantly, I know where I'm going."

"Amen."

"Remember that time we picked up the Carter sisters -- "

"Shut up," Uncle Doyle said.

"I was just --"

"Don't just!"

Ben raised his hands, palms out, as a sign of surrender.

"I've been trying to tell you something important," the preacher said to Uncle Doyle. He shifted to the other foot and waited until he had their attention. "Apparently your father buried a large sum of money in the back yard."

Uncle Doyle stopped the swing from drifting. His eyes stroked the preacher. "Did you say money?"

"A large sum."

"How large?"

"Twenty thousand dollars."

Uncle Doyle came out of the swing so fast it almost dumped his wife. "Where?"

"In the back yard."

Uncle Doyle grabbed the preacher by the shoulders and shook him. "In the back yard? Where in the back yard?"

"She didn't say."

"How could she not say," Ben said.

"If you'll stop shaking me, Doyle, I'll tell you exactly what she told me."

Uncle Doyle unhanded the preacher, then looked around like he didn't know exactly what to do with himself.

"Sit down," Aunt Molly said.

He sat.

"It was Tuesday," the preacher said. "I'd been to the hospital to see Sister Rachel. She had her gall bladder removed."

"We don't care about all that," Ben said. "Skip the salad and get to the meat."

"Ben!"

"It's all right, Molly," the preacher said. "Ralph sold some land he inherited from a great uncle.

Apparently he buried half of it in the back yard. A rainy day fund, so to speak."

"Your ole man was a strange bird all right," Ben said. "Probably all that talk radio he listened to."

"Twenty thousand dollars," Uncle Doyle said, gazing at the preacher like he saw clear through him.

"You ever seen twenty thousand dollars, Ben?"

"Not in one place. Say, how do you know she wasn't hallucinating?"

"She was lucid," the preacher said. "Whether what she told me is true or not I can't say, but she was lucid when she told it."

Uncle Doyle glared at the reverend. "Momma never told a lie in her life."

"Yes she did," Aunt Molly said, patting his arm.

"Why didn't she tell me?"

"I can't say," the preacher said.

"Twenty thousand dollars. Right in the back yard all this time. Damn me to hell."

"Doyle!"

"I didn't mean it literal," he said to his wife.

"How do we go about finding it," Ben asked. "Metal detector?"

"Tommy Harris has one," Uncle Doyle said. "We can't tell him why we need it, though. We can't tell nobody about this until we find that money. You hear me, Preacher?"

"I'm not in the habit of carrying rumors," the preacher said."

Uncle Doyle shook his head. "This ain't rumor. This here's a deathbed confession."

"You're wasting your time with a metal detector, though. She said he buried it in a fiberglass box."

"Fiberglass? Who the hell buries money in a fiberglass box?"

"Your father, apparently. Maybe he didn't want anyone finding it with a metal detector."

"Sounds like him," Aunt Molly said. "Always suspicious. I remember one time he strung tripwires all over the back yard because he thought the Riley kids were stealing eggs from the henhouse."

"Shut up, Molly," Uncle Doyle said, netting himself a stern look from the preacher. He squirmed. "I mean, now's not the time for reminiscing about Daddy, unless you know where he might've buried a box full of money."

"Coins or bills," Ben asked.

"Bills."

"Probably dry-rotted by now," Ben said. "I hope he had the good sense to wrap it in plastic."

"Plastic? That's a fine way to make paper rot," Uncle Doyle said. "Don't you watch TV? You think a rat can chew through fiberglass, Preacher?"

"Rats can chew threw anything, Babe," Aunt Molly said.

"How many times I gotta tell you not to call me that in front of people?"

Aunt Molly rolled her eyes.

"I had a woman who used to call me babe," Ben said. "She said it was reserved for special people."

"You're special all right," Aunt Molly said. "Did this woman have a valve stem in her back?"

Reverend Thomas cleared his throat.

"Sorry," she said.

"You ain't exactly un-driven snow," Ben mumbled.

Doyle looked up from somewhere far away. "I think I got a shovel in the shed, Ben."

"I got one at home," Ben said.

"There's another hole needs digging first," the preacher said. "Let's not forget there's a body in the house."

Uncle Doyle blushed, then jabbed Aunt Molly with his elbow. "Well go call somebody!"

She scurried into the house and left the men alone again.

"We might be digging for days," Uncle Doyle said. "We'll have to close the junkyard."

"Weeks," Ben said. "Too bad we don't have a backhoe. We could rent one."

"What if we don't find anything?"

"Greed has undone many a good man," the preacher said.

"You'll get your share," Uncle Doyle said. "In the collection plate."

"Ten percent is two thousand dollars," the preacher said. "That's the Lord's share, though, not mine."

"In that case we'll give the Lord his share when we see him," Ben said.

"Blasphemy is a free-fall into hell," the preacher said. "You're not invincible, Ben."

Aunt Molly rejoined them and said the hospital was sending an ambulance.

Uncle Doyle and Ben started digging as soon as they returned from the funeral. Reverend Thomas stopped by later that evening and blessed their efforts. Aunt Molly toted ice water and sandwiches.

"Don't you think you should tell them," the preacher said to Aunt Molly.

"Look at 'em dig," she said. "Doyle ain't huffed and puffed that much since our honeymoon."

"When?"

"Tomorrow," she said. "Maybe."

When they stopped for the night, Ben crashed on the couch instead of going home. At first light they hit the yard again and dug more holes. Aunt Molly couldn't bring herself to tell them that day either.

Halfway through the third day, Uncle Doyle stopped and leaned on his shovel. He stood waist deep in another failure. "Ben, suppose Daddy set this up just to make me work?"

Ben stopped digging and sat on the edge of his tenth hole of the morning. "Damn me if I wouldn't put it past him."

"You think we should quit?"

Ben surveyed the place. Dozens of holes dotted the yard, each marked by a mound of red clay dirt.

"Suit yourself." He stood and stabbed his shovel into the ground for another turn. "I ain't quittin'."

Aunt Molly brought lunch and ate with them on the ground. They ate fried chicken and homemade biscuits, and washed it down with beer from a cooler she had brought out half an hour earlier.

Uncle Doyle tossed a chicken bone into his newest pit and belched. Aunt Molly frowned and shook her head, then cautioned them not to overdo it. It was hot out and they looked spent.

She stood and brushed the dirt from her jeans. "Doyle?"

Uncle Doyle looked up and saw her staring out toward what remained of the chicken coop. He scrambled up out of the hole and followed her gaze. "What the hell you looking at?"

She pointed.

"What?"

"That rock. Where'd it come from?"

Uncle Doyle looked at the big rock beside the chicken coop. "That rock? I don't know. Momma said it was decoration."

"Most people decorate their front yard," she said.

The two men looked at each other and grinned.

"Come on, Ben!"

They ran with their shovels toward the rock. It was a big rock. A handful for one man, but no match for two. Together they rolled it away and went to work with their shovels. Two feet down, Ben's shovel hit something solid.

"Doyle? Hear that?"

"I heard it."

Molly watched as they unearthed a white box about the size of a washtub. It took another ten minutes for them to get it out of the hole and up onto the grass.

"It's bigger than I expected," Ben said.

"Maybe there's more than twenty thousand," Uncle Doyle said. "There's a hasp but no lock. Why wouldn't he lock it? I'll shoot that damned preacher if it's empty."

"Why lock a box you're gonna bury?"

Ben had a point, Uncle Doyle agreed. Molly told them to open the damned thing and get it over with. Ben lifted the lid and threw it back on its hinges, revealing a large pile of paper money. Tens and twenties and hundred dollar bills thrown into the box in a disorganized heap. Spending money.

"Look at all that green," Ben said. "I say we count it."

Doyle reached in and dipped his hands in the cash. "I say we get drunk."

Aunt Molly trotted to the house and fetched his bottle from the kitchen, along with a garbage bag for the money. While the two men passed the bottle back and forth, she transferred the pile of loose bills into the bag.

They sat in the back yard and drank until both men passed out from liquor and exhaustion. Molly carried the bag of money to the front porch and called the preacher. Fifteen minutes later she heard a car coming up the gravel road, then saw his black Buick come around the curve. He stopped at the mailbox and waited while she ran up the driveway clutching the garbage bag to her chest.

"Last chance to back out," he said.

She reached over and squeezed his thigh. "Shut up and drive."

Release Date Set

2015-01-18T09:50:00.000-06:00

Release Date: March 23, 2015

After THE NIGHT TRAIN, Jayrod Nash, Arnold Wise, and Farley Milo went their separate ways, until Arnold’s abduction threw Jayrod and Farley, aka Frank Mayo, together again for a cross-country rescue mission that soon leaves them wondering if they are the hunters or the hunted.

Frank Mayo is a fry cook in a greasy breakfast restaurant in Atlanta. His home is the back room of an abandoned building infested with homeless addicts. Among them he is respected. To the rest of the city he is invisible. Enter Reese — a ghost from Frank’s past, with a newspaper article that throws Frank’s world into chaos. Soon he is reunited with Jayrod Nash, the abused boy he took under his wing in another life. Together they track the man who abducted Jayrod’s friend Arnold, but things aren’t always what they seem, and time has a way of changing people you thought you knew. The hunters become the hunted, and trust is a commodity best spent with caution.

Red Eyes is a story of friendship, betrayal, and second chances.

Pre-order your copy today by clicking HERE and Amazon will automatically send it to your Kindle them moment it become available to the public.

I never intended to write a sequel to The Night Train.

So often sequels fail to live up to the original. When I decided to do this, I made a commitment to write a novel that can stand on its own merit. I wanted readers who haven’t read The Night Train to enjoy the full experience of reading a novel that is not part of a series, while not including too many spoilers should they choose to go back afterward and read TNT. At the same time, I didn’t want to subject those who have read The Night Train to excessive repetition of the original story. Striking that balance proved to be the most difficult part of creating Red Eyes. I eagerly await your verdict.

Pre-order RED EYES by clicking here. If you haven't read THE NIGHT TRAIN, get it now for only 99 cents.

Red Eyes

2014-12-06T10:34:00.000-06:00

Coming in 2015

It has been almost three years since I released my first novel, The Night Train. Since then it has garnered 38 reviews on Amazon, with an average rating of 4.8 stars. I've received countless comments (Facebook, Twitter, in person), emails, phone calls, and even a lengthy letter from a fellow author who survived child abuse.

Child abuse is the dominate theme of The Night Train, but I didn't write it to be a book about child abuse. I wrote it to be a book about a boy who happened to be abused.

Since The Night Train, I've released two more novels -- Norton Road and Blinders. All three are stand-alone books. Series books aren't my thing. Along the way, so many readers asked when I was going to write a sequel to The Night Train that I decided to do something about it.

Red Eyes is the story of Farley Milo -- the scruffy, often lawless, hobo who took Jayrod Nash and Arnold Wise under his wing and guided them (pushed, pulled, sometimes prodded) through the adventure that made up the pages of The Night Train. In this sequel, readers will learn more background on Farley (who goes by the alias of Frank for much of the story), and they will follow him on a suspenseful journey that rips him from the alleys of Atlanta and throws him into the fight of his life when an old adversary kidnaps Arnold and lures him into a cross-country pursuit rife with pitfalls and stacked with characters old and new.

You don't have to read The Night Train in order to make sense of Red Eyes, but I suggest you do because it will enrich the reading experience of the sequel.

But what good would a blog post about an upcoming novel be without a teaser? Following is the opening lines of Red Eyes:

In prison they called him Red Eyes — a variation of red eye, which meant hard stare. His given name was Farley. In Atlanta, they called him Frank.

A noise awoke him. The city peddled noise like a drug, but this was different. This noise stood out. He pushed himself up to one elbow and cocked his ear toward the steel door and listened. There it was again. One small metal object probing another.

Frank visualized a pick tool probing the tumblers of the disengaged deadbolt, guided by hands taking direction from a brain that didn’t know about the length of pipe laid across two L-brackets just above the doorknob on the inside. Frank didn’t use the deadbolt because he didn’t have the key.

He threw back his blanket and groped the darkness for his boots, then pulled them on without making a sound. The noise at the door stopped, then restarted with less caution. Not the police, Frank thought. Cops would have reconnoitered the abandoned restaurant first, and would know the steel door that opened into the alley was the only way in or out of the ten-by-ten storage room. Besides, cops didn’t pick locks, they knocked down doors with rams, or blew them with explosives.

If not cops then who? A bounty hunter, perhaps, or someone out to settle an old score. Frank had lots of old scores against him. He also had more sense than to seal himself into a room with only one way out.

Red Eyes is scheduled for release in early 2015. For the most up to date information, like my Facebook Page, follow me on Twitter, check out my website, or subscribe to this blog (enter your email address in the subscription box to the right of this post).

As always, thank you for reading.

Passing It On

2014-11-07T10:31:00.000-06:00

Logan will turn twelve next month. So far he has accompanied my wife and me to every author-related event in my brief two-year stint as a published author. But more than that, Logan loves to create. In addition to writing stories, he comes up with new ideas for video games and movies (both of which he develops by acting them out in the living room, often in front of the television). For the past few weeks he has spent most of his spare time creating comic books.

Logan has a great capacity for understanding things. Sometimes I bounce ideas off him -- ideas for a scene, or a direction I'm considering for one of my novels. Most of the time his insight is spot on. He's into zombies and The Walking Dead, though, so there's that.

If you are a parent, I don't have to tell you what a thrill it is to see your child involving himself in artistic and/or intellectual activities, especially if he is following in your footsteps. Not a parent? I could probably expend a thousand words and you still wouldn't fully understand. Parents and children share a bond that can't be replicated outside that experience.

The best we can do is instill in our children an interest in positive things. A spark, then stand back and let them do with it what they will, encouraging them every step of the way without smothering them. It's a fine line to walk as a parent. I didn't do it alone, though. Not by a long shot. Sharon introduced him to our local library and makes it a regular part of their routine. Done correctly, parenting is a team sport.

Early on we noticed how much Logan looks like me. Not now, but in the old pictures of me at his age.

Logan and I have a long-standing tradition of "storytime" before he goes to bed. Not so much now, but we still do it from time to time. Storytime for us has never been a retelling of the old standards. Early on he let me know he doesn't care a wit about three billy goats, or a trio of bears breaking into a little boy's home and sleeping in his bed. Logan wanted originals. Stories I made up on the fly, with him lying there on my arm. Coming up with a new and different story every night, day in and day out, year after year, was a challenge, but he has a sharp memory and refused to let me tell the same one twice.

A few nights ago he asked me to read the latest scene in the comic book he is writing. Our conversation went something like this:

"I used to wonder how you came up with all those good stories," he said. "I wondered where your ideas came from. All those stories and you never told a bad one. I just realized that I'm coming up with ideas for comic books. They just come to me and it's not that hard."

I said something about being proud of him, and told him he has a huge talent. As he walked away, he stopped and turned to me and said, "I get that from you."

Yeah, it felt every bit as good as you're thinking it did.

Meeting Readers

2014-10-31T13:10:00.001-05:00

Basically, I'm an introvert. More Type B than A. In school I was so shy the shy kids probably wondered what was wrong with me. On the other hand, once I'm comfortable around someone, or some group, I tend to make up for all those other times when I didn't say much. Hint: if you find yourself wishing I would shut the hell up, it probably means I feel relaxed around you, so much so that it's okay if you tell me to shut up.

As a little boy I used to hide under the kitchen table when company would come. Sometimes, if they stayed long enough, I would come out and talk their ears off, probably making them wish I would crawl back under and leave them alone.

I still get nervous when I speak to groups, but I think (hope) I'm getting better at handling it. The unexpected thing for me was how nervous I get at book signings. Book signings can either be great (you sell a lot of books and meet a lot of readers), or they can be not so great. When I first started, I feared the day I would have a signing and no one show up. Okay, I've done that. That one is out of the way. There may be more, but there will never be that first time again, so it's okay.

Last weekend I had the honor of signing books at an event to benefit a local hospice. It went well. It went great, in fact, and not just because of how many books I sold. It was a great day because of how many people stopped by my table and said good things about my books, or simply told me they had heard good things about them. What made it more special was that I didn't know any of them. Don't get me wrong, I love it when friends, family, and acquaintances tell me they like my books, but when people you don't know tell you, it lets you know your circle of readers is expanding. You sense something of a momentum, and it makes you work harder to build on it.

I'm still an introvert. I've always considered myself a bit odd. Out of my element in almost any crowd, but meeting my readers face to face, signing a book for them, posing for the occasional picture ... those are the parts of being a writer that I never saw coming. For someone who considers himself fairly good with words, I find it hard to encapsulate exactly what that feels like. Readers, by nature, are intelligent and insightful. To have your work -- your creation -- accepted by them, sometimes praised by them, is a very satisfying thing. It's exciting, inspiring, and humbling. Yes, humbling, because you realize that without your readers you would serve no purpose. Because of them, you are able to live a dream.

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You can find my books all over the place. To date I've released three: The Night Train, Norton Road, and Blinders. You can find me at my website, on Facebook, or Twitter, but you won't find me under any tables.

A Halloween Story

2014-10-28T17:15:00.000-05:00

A Bag of Snickers

by Carl Pardon

Cort Hatcher hadn’t always been a drunk, but a drunk he was and there was no denying it. He opened the door of his mobile home and stepped out onto the plank porch in his bare feet. It was cold, the first cold morning of the season. Soon the frost would come and coat the landscape with brown. His was a small lot but private, with trees of varying species dotting his yard. Fall was his favorite time of year but it never failed to plunge him into melancholy.

He eased himself into the wooden swing that hung from the rafters by chains and cradled a hot cup of coffee between his massive hands, hands that had once been hard and calloused. A gentle breeze blew right through his white cotton t-shirt and green checked pajama bottoms.

“It’s cold this morning.” Sometimes Cort talked to himself. He raised the blue cup to his lips and took a sip. “That’s hot. Feels good, though.”

The coffee warmed him but his system needed more. “Not today. We’re not giving in this time.” Even as he spoke the words, his mind slipped through the door, to the kitchen, and into the cabinet beside the refrigerator. Whiskey. “No. It’s Halloween and I can’t be drunk when they come this time.” He remained in the swing and took a deep breath. It was not quite cold enough yet to see his breath when he exhaled. “Not this time.”

Every year Cort decorated his yard with square bales of hay and jack-o-lanterns. Ghosts and goblins hung from his trees by the dozen. Some people go overboard with Christmas decorations but not Cort. Halloween was his obsession. When he finally rose from the swing he descended the concrete steps, three of them, and made an inspection of the decorations. It wouldn’t do to appear sloppy tonight.

Each tick of the clock brought Cort one second closer to nightfall. His hands trembled as his internal organs thirsted for alcohol. By noon his head pounded. Even his eyes ached. “Just a few more hours. We can do it. A promise is a promise.” He paced the floor, ate a sandwich for lunch, then went out into the yard and checked the ghosts and goblins again. Not a second passed that the bottle in the kitchen didn’t cross his mind. At two o’clock he drove to town and bought a single bag of miniature Snickers and a dozen red roses. When he returned home, he placed them on the coffee table and stood back to admire them, then sighed and checked the clock again.

At long last the sun began to slide below the tree line. Inch by inch it fell until all that remained was a faint splash of orange in the western sky. They would come soon. He had to be ready. How surprised they would be to find him sober this year. He made one more pass through the yard, this time lighting the candles inside the jack-o-lanterns. Nine glowing pumpkins would greet them. Last year there were eight. Next year, ten.

Cort stepped back inside and turned off the living room light, leaving the porch light on of course, lest they think him not at home. There was no bottle on his mind now, not now. Sobriety felt strange to him, though, like some long lost recollection that can no longer be. “They should be coming any minute now.” He waited.

An hour passed. They were late. Then another. Perhaps they weren’t coming this year. Suddenly he wondered if their visits had been no more than drunken fantasies? His heart raced. His throat grew tight. He needed a drink. “No! Not yet. They’ll come. They have to come.”

Fifteen more minutes and still no lights in the driveway. The tremble in his hands was violent now, so violent he could barely hold a glass of water without wetting the floor. “Just one little drink. Something to calm me. They can’t see me shaking like this.” He rushed to the kitchen and pulled open the cabinet door. There it sat. All day it had taunted him. He reached in and grabbed it, then hesitated. “Just one drink. One! Not two.” He twisted the cap off and raised the bottle to his lips. The aroma of the dark whiskey calmed him. The doorbell rang.

“Trick or treat!”

Cort jumped at the sound. “They’re here! And to think I almost ruined it.” He recapped the bottle and returned it to its spot beside the crackers then hurried to the front door. On the porch stood a boy of six and a woman of twenty seven, both dressed in costumes. Cort knew their ages because he knew their identity.

“Ah, look at you! You’re a pirate this year. Grand.” Cort pushed open the door and stepped out onto the porch and immediately fell to his knees in front of the boy. “I was afraid you weren’t coming.” He reached out but the boy withdrew. “Yes, I’m sorry. No touching.” He looked up at the boy’s mother and strained to see her face behind the black veil. Her costume never changed. She wore the garb of a lady in mourning.

“Take off your mask, Timmy, and let me look at you,” Cort said to the boy. The boy raised the pirate mask and smiled. “I’m sober this year,” Cort said. “Just like I promised. Are Snickers still your favorite?”

“Yes, daddy,” the boy said.

“Oh, look at me,” Cort said, fighting back the tears in his eyes. “I’ve forgotten to bring them out. Wait right here. Don’t leave.” He pushed himself to his feet and quickly retrieved the bag of candy and the roses from the coffee table. When he turned back toward the door his visitors were gone. He ran outside and called for them, yelled for all he was worth, then fell to his knees and sobbed like a child, clutching the bag of Snickers and the roses to his chest. Almost an hour passed before he righted himself and began to walk down the driveway. When he reached the road he turned left. Gravel crunched beneath his feet with every step.

With nothing but the moon to light his way, Cort walked for two miles then turned right into a narrow drive, then through a metal gate. He could navigate the cemetery with his eyes closed, as the moon was not always so bright when he came here. There is nothing more private than a cemetery at night. He walked leftward, along the fence for twenty paces, then right for fifteen more. Sometimes he counted them off as he walked, but not tonight.

Two headstones stood side by side, the bottom dates the same. Nine years ago today. Halloween. “Timothy Ray Hatcher. Born June 23, 1995. Died October 31, 2001,” he said aloud. There were no tears now. He had cried himself dry. “Janet Ann Hatcher. Born August 3, 1975. Died October 31, 2001. In God’s loving arms.”

Cort stared at the granite for a long time, then placed the bag of candy before one and the roses before the other. It was a slow walk home. At times he forgot where he was or what he was doing, such was his grief. When he reached the end of his driveway, the eastern horizon had an orange glow. The nine jack-o-lanterns in his yard were silent, their faces dark. The ghosts and goblins hung motionless out of respect as he made his way up the driveway, onto the porch, and into the kitchen. “Three hundred and sixty five more days,” he said, as he opened the cabinet beside the refrigerator.

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For more information on me and my novels, please visit my website or join me on Facebook or Twitter.

Mississippi Library Association Review - NORTON ROAD

2014-10-22T17:37:00.000-05:00

My second novel, Norton Road was recently reviewed by Mississippi Libraries, a publication of the Mississippi Library Association. The review is viewable on the Mississippi Library Association website in PDF format, but it is not easy to link to, so I am posting it here in its entirety, unaltered (except one instance where I corrected the spelling of my last name). I would like to give a special thanks to the writer of the review, Heather Pohl for giving me permission to use her review in promotional materials.

Purdon, Carl. Norton Road. Createspace, 2013. 332 pp. $14.99 (paperback)

Oscar ‘Pap’ Jones is at war. Armed with a small red toolbox and flashlight, Pap leads a campaign of mechanical sabotage and mischief against the “noisy, dirty, sawdust-belching invasion of his privacy” next door, Khane Manufacturing. For two years Pap has conducted nighttime raids against Davis Khane, trying to put the furniture factory out of business. His raids soon cause the owner Davis Khane to retaliate and enlist the help of former deputy sheriff, and aspiring sheriff candidate, Bodie Craig.

Pap’s war with Khane, which includes the unfortunate skunk and microwave incident, comes to an abrupt end when he is accused of murder and hauled off to jail. In order to survive he must destroy Bodie, whose passion for money, power, and a woman he can’t have has quickly turned into deadly obsession.

Norton Road is a multiple viewpoint novel that successfully transitions between the three main characters: Oscar ‘Pap’ Jones, Sheriff Sam Gant, and sheriff candidate Bodie Craig. Through these transitions the reader is able to see the story from all sides, making the characters much more than one dimensional. Purdon gives a clear picture of Pap’s hatred for the factory, Sheriff Gant’s life outside of the small-town police department, and how Bodie Craig’s many passions become one giant twisted obsession. The reader really gets to know the characters; wanting to not only know where they will end up, but also rooting for them along the way.

While Norton Road does not contain strong adult language, it does contain mature themes and is not suitable for young children. The novel will, however, appeal to Mississippians who have lived in similar places as well as anyone who is a fan of contemporary murder mystery fiction. Public libraries, especially those interested in collecting works written by Mississippi-born authors, should consider Norton Road when purchasing for their collection.

Heather Pohl
Acquisitions and Adult Services Librarian Columbus-Lowndes Public Library

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For more information on me and my novels, please visit my website or join me on Facebook or Twitter.

Mississippi Library Association Review of BLINDERS

2014-10-16T18:42:00.000-05:00

My third novel, Blinders was recently reviewed by Mississippi Libraries, a publication of the Mississippi Library Association. The review is viewable on the Mississippi Library Association website in PDF format, but it is not easy to link to, so I am posting it here in its entirety, unaltered. I would like to give a special thanks to the writer of the review, Tamara D. Blackwell for giving me permission to use her review in promotional materials.

Purdon, Carl. Blinders. Lexington, Kentucky: Carl Purdon, 2014. $14.99 (paperback)

Blinders is Pontotoc County, Mississippi, native Carl Purdon’s third novel. Set in Mississippi, it is the story of Dale Criss who, after serving 25 years for killing his high school sweetheart, has just been released from Parchman Prison and is now returning home. No one in his hometown is happy about his return and most think he should never have been released; when a former police officer is murdered, it seems to confirm everyone’s suspicions.

The novel opens with a prologue depicting the final hours of Dale’s trial in a seemingly corrupt courtroom with an arrogant sheriff and a gun-toting judge, combined with an inexperienced court-appointed lawyer and a gallery that’s clearly out for Dale’s blood. The scene resonates with the reader, leaving the distinct impression that Dale did not receive a fair and impartial trial. The reader’s sympathies are tested from the beginning, though, by Dale’s recklessly irresponsible choices and behavior – indeed, at times he appears to be his own worst enemy.

Thrown into the mix are two lawmen with very different attitudes towards law enforcement and how it should be implemented, and who are constantly butting heads to see who will prevail. Trap Malone is a by-the-book kind of man that believes there’s only one line to follow and it should never be crossed. Challenging Trap’s authority is Chief Deputy Carson Webster, a remnant of the former sheriff’s administration who preferred his old bosses’ style of justice and is a constant irritant to Trap. While Carson’s adamant desire to put Dale back behind bars at any cost tests Trap’s resolve, it is his wife’s betrayal, however, that has him questioning everything he believes in.

This well written book has a fast-paced plot that will appeal to contemporary fiction readers who enjoy action and suspense. While the book does have violent content, the violent scenes are short and the worst takes place “off-page.” Carl Purdon’s exciting book is suitable for most adult audiences and is recommended for all public libraries.

Tamara D. Blackwell
Reference Services
Bolivar County Library System

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For more information on me and my novels, please visit my website or join me on Facebook or Twitter.

Recharging The Batteries

2014-10-08T21:01:00.001-05:00

Sometimes, regardless what your job is, you just need to get away from the grind and recharge your batteries.

I've been working on the sequel to The Night Train for a handful of months now, plus holding down a full time day job. About a month ago I was driving back from Ohio and got on the Natchez Trace Parkway in Nashville. Those first few miles on the Trace reminded me of one of my favorite places on earth.

Gatlinburg.

The Great Smokey Mountains are spectacular year round, but especially when they slip into their autumn garb. My wife and I honeymooned in Gatlinburg in March of 2001, then went back for our first anniversary. Our son, Logan, was born the following December (you do the math). Both times we stayed in a cabin called Little Cabin In The Woods. We didn't get to go back for a few years and, by that time, the cabin -- our cabin -- had been sold, so we stayed elsewhere. Last month I did a Google search and found that cabin again, managed by a different company. The only open weekend in October was this past weekend, so I booked it.

During the weeks between the time I booked the cabin and the day we left, Sharon and I reminisced about those first two trips. We were both excited to go back to the Little Cabin, and hoped it would be as good as we remembered. It was.

The inside decor had changed just enough to notice. We remembered things as we walked through it. Logan, who is eleven now, absolutely loved it. He made a "perch" in the living room window seat and spent most of his "home" time sitting there reading a book or playing video games.

Sometimes he just sat and stared out at the mountain view. Sharon and I loved seeing him enjoy the trip as much as he did.

We did other things. Outside things. Fun, adventurous things. I played (and won) miniature golf for the first time in my life, but
that cabin made the trip special. No, I take that back. Sharon and Logan made the trip special. The cabin provided the setting for special.

Our vacation was like the novel I'm writing. It had a beginning, a middle, and sadly, an end. It had characters (I met this unique guy from West Virginia -- a coal miner, who said he had faced down a six foot black bear) and adventure. The mountain roads provided twists and turns. We didn't always know what to expect. There were weather changes and a storm, and thanks to the Little Cabin In The Woods, it had the perfect setting.

Unfortunately, we were too early for the fall show, but green is a pretty color too. Tuesday morning we packed and left, grumbling as we walked out the door, off the porch, and down the steps. Can't we have just one more day? At the last minute we decided to take the long way home over the mountains and were rewarded with a sneak peek at fall. The trees had slipped on a light jacket of yellows, browns, and reds since our trip over two days prior. Unexpected, like that twist I slipped into the scene I wrote on the back deck just before the storm forced me inside the night before.

I would be hard pressed to think of anything that would have made

our vacation better. Anything except more time, that is. If I ever turn this writing thing into a money-making venture, I see a cabin in our future.

This morning I went back to the day job, a little sad it's over, but thankful we had the opportunity to go. We made memories, and added one more chapter to this novel called us.

Basic Book Promotion

2014-09-27T08:56:00.003-05:00

My New Business Card

How can I get people to buy my book? It's a question on almost every author's mind. We've all clicked those links, you know the ones -- the links that promise answers that don't exist. Even though we know there is no magic answer, we still click.

We click because we think we've written the next bestseller (if you don't think that about your book then why did you publish it?) but we can't figure out how to let people know.

Family and friends, co-workers, Facebook acquaintances, these are all great first steps, but unless you are already famous, you simply don't know enough people for Amazon to notice. Millions, maybe billions, of people flock to Amazon. They buy books, but how do they know your book exists? If it's not on the charts, they won't, unless someone tells them.

Word of mouth is one of the best marketing tools a writer can have, so every new reader puts you one step closer to your goal. Most readers may be surprised to know this, but even the simplest mention of your book (assuming they enjoyed it) sends the author into orbit and makes him or her that much more dedicated to writing something new. Writers are sensitive by nature. We crave feedback. Readers are our lifeblood. They are what make us sit for countless hours driving ourselves crazy for just the right way to make that next sentence pop (that's how novels are born -- one sentence at a time).

Every writer should have a website -- somewhere people can go to get all the information they need about you and your books. Provide an easy way for people to contact you. Facebook is also one of the fundamentals. An author needs not just a personal Facebook profile, but a Facebook Page (the business version of Facebook). Then there's Twitter, Google+, Goodreads, LinkedIn, Pinterest, the list goes on and on.

Over the last few days I came to realize I've been overlooking another basic promotion tool. One of the most basic, in fact. A tool almost as old as business itself. What is it you ask? A simple business card. Yep, I've been trying to sell books since 2012 and have never had a business card. I corrected that this morning thanks to the ease of creating almost any promotional item on VistaPrint. The hard part is coming up with something catchy, which I hope I accomplished.

There is no magic bullet that will rocket your book to the top of the charts. Writing is an art. Marketing is pure business.

What is your marketing strategy?

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Carl Purdon is the author of The Night Train, Norton Road, and Blinders. He can be found most days on Facebook and Twitter.