Who is this substack for?

This substack is for nerdy, academic southerners who may have grown up fundamentalist, for teachers of writing, for lovers of science fiction, and for those who enjoy elegiac poems about Keurigs.

It’s the place I post whatever I’m currently writing. Sometimes we talk about it.

This tends to be…

☠ A novel tentatively titled Plath is Dead. As I toil away, I occasionally share excerpts from the novel-in-progress (with commentary), describe bits of the writing process, or pen little updates about the journey to publication.

🐐 A collection of essays called How to Bury a Goat about education, art, local culture, and growing up fundamentalist in the American South. 

🩳 A great heaping gob of short stories. Usually speculative. Always weird. 

✒ Odd poems about mundane things and extraordinary people. (Usually kitchen products or my daughter).   

📖 Book reviews and recommendations. 

I jump freely between these modes, publishing something every other Tuesday at 6:00 AM.

Why “Fourth Castle on the Left?”

When it comes to writing I’ve done a lot of failing. 

And yet, “as a dog that returneth to his vomit” so too do I continue to waste time writing, reading, writing some more, sending what I write to literature magazines, Sci-Fi short story anthologies, essay competitions… 

The whole process is just like that scene from Monty Python where the hopeful (delusional) father shares his dream of a legacy with the hopeless (delusional) son: 

“Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was a swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. 

It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one! 

That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one! 

That burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp, but the FOURTH ONE stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these lands.” 

Every castle I’d built thus far had sunk into the swamp. So I thought it high time to break ground on my fourth castle: this substack. If you’re curious to see what it looks like, I’ll show you the way. It’s on that cliff over there, fourth on the Left. Can’t miss it.

Provided I’m not visited by a (delusional) knight errant I posting here every two weeks, as it strikes my fancy, and as my little ones allow.