Jack Butler, author of Living in Little Rock With Miss Little Rock. JuJitsu for Christ, Nightshade, is a great writer and a great friend. Also published by us at Mud Flat Press are Jack’s books: Practicing Zen Without a Licence and Christmas on a Distant Planet (illustrated by Gabi Clayton.) We met Jack at Mississippi Writers Day in the 1980s when we were publishing Mississippi Arts and Letters.
Jack is one of a half a dozen writers who agreed to be a first reader of the manuscript of my latest novel, The Descendants of the Pirate Pegleg Josiah Johnson and the first of those writers to send me commentary. I’m thrilled to share a smidgen of what he said with you:
“This is the sort of book that makes one long to break down and utter those terrible cliches, “larger than life,” “rollicking,” “a boisterous family saga.”
“It is not larger than life, but exactly the size of life, and that’s what makes it good. This is perhaps your most ambitious book, setting out to deliver not the history or one or two people, but of a whole family, and yet cause us to share in their lives.
“Bo brings them to Olympia, bringing Harlan and his brood all the way from Louisiana, which nicely allows you exactly the scope of your own experience as a background. The way you move through the generations rings entirely true, all the changes and misunderstandings and alliances and realliances …. You work it all in, the politics, Covid 19, all of it. Billy is an unreconstructed Trump-lover, mask defier, and Covid-denier, but he holds somehow to his stature and his dignity. I am not only moved by the way you allow the characters to be touched by the books, the thoughts, the movements of their own generations, but believe them. Through it all, there is a sense of family that holds them together.”
After all the first readers have sent me their comments and suggestions, I will make changes as I see fit, and then Gabi, will do the final edit and design the cover with me. This is the process I go through on all of my books. It takes a while. My guess is it will take six months to a year. Meanwhile, I have one more new novel, Locked In, that is a little further along in the process. Gabi has made her edits, and now I have to do my final changes and we’ll design the cover.