Alec Clayton I was writing a story titled “Bring on the Juice” to be published in a collection of stories called Peaceful Point: A Quartet of Stories. The other three stories, “A Place Called Peacful? Point,” “Little Jimmy Bryce” and “The Death of R&J” were already finished. “Bring on the Juice” is a story about a magazine …
Do you have a friend who is a writer and who has published one or more books either with a small, independent press or self-published, and have you read your friend’s book(s) and enjoyed them enough to honestly recommend them? If so, then please do so. Recommend them publicly on Facebook and/or other social media …
At some point not too long ago I created a document with the opening lines of all my books. I had forgotten about it but I just now came across it. You might enjoy reading them: “Painting can be an evil mistress. She can love you tender and she can love you raunchy, and she …
I was sitting on my couch looking out my window at the trees and the houses across the street, and I started to mentally write a description of what I was seeing as if it were a scene in a novel or short story. This is a typical thing for me to do. Then, I …
by Alec Clayton My dad died 35 years ago, and my mother died 38 years ago. This week I received in the mail a large box of family memorabilia from Pat Parish Ackland, one of my many nieces. Inside were photographs, more than half of which were of people I don’t recognize, and newspaper clippings, …
One More Day review After reading Diane Chiddister’s debut novel One More Day, it is almost impossible to believe that Chiddister has never worked in or been a resident in an assisted living home or known a loved one who worked in or lived in an assisted living situation. How else, could she know so …
My longtime friend, the painter Thornton Willis, died June 15, 2025 from complications due to COVID and pneumonia. As soon as I heard about his death from his wife, Vered Lieb, I wrote a brief memory of my friendship with Thornton and sent it to her. She immediately wrote back asking if she could get …
Ask me if I can recommend a good book. Yes, I can. I can recommend a couple of them, if you can take them. The best book I have read this year, if not the best of the decade, is Erasure by Percival Everett, the guy who won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction for …
What’s in a name One of my favorite things about writing fiction is coming up with names for characters—names that say something about the characters, hopefully with a bit of humor. Like Driver and Punkin, the Lumpkin twins’ parents in Tupelo. The inspiration for giving them nicknames (if I remember correctly I never called them …
Thirty years ago, give or take a few years, a couple lived on our street who would not speak to us. If we tried to engage with them in any way, even such a little a thing as to nod and smile in their direction, they would look away or stare right through us and …