First Post

In the Avett Brothers’ documentary May It Last, Scott and Seth Avett reveal an interesting tidbit about the band’s early days. When it just consisted of the two brothers, they didn’t venture far from their home base of Concord, NC. However, when they recruited their bass player (Bob), he pushed them to begin touring.

As Scott Avett put it, “We were self-centered hillbillies who thought the world was going to either come to us or not. And either way they were missing out. And Bob was like ‘Are you going to go play for anybody? Other than Cabarrus County?... Do you guys want to go anywhere?’”

“Do you want to go anywhere?” is the question I’ve been asking myself recently about my writing. I work hard – getting up in the morning to write, no matter how hectic life gets – but it’s not enough to just create art. If you’re serious, you also have to get out and promote it.

If the Avett Brothers hadn’t started touring, they wouldn’t be the Avett Brothers. Instead of playing Madison Square Garden and opening for the Stones, they’d be the most amazing coffee-shop band you’ve never heard of.

I watched May It Last about the time I was thinking about creating a website. For the past fifteen years, I’ve been submitting short stories to literary magazines. Over that time, I’ve gotten about a dozen published (not all of which are included on my “Publications” page. Some stories age better than others…) It’s a great feeling to get an acceptance letter from a magazine, especially if that comes after racking up a string of rejections. And it’s even more thrilling when the magazine arrives in the mail and you see your words in print, your bio listed in the “Contributors” section.

The thrill is short-lived, though. After thumbing through the magazine a few times, it goes on the shelf and begins gathering dust. After fifteen years of this, I have a nice little collection of magazines, and not much else. I tell people I’m a writer but don’t have much to show for it. Unless you happen to subscribe to lit mags like Rockhurst Review or Swill, then you haven’t seen my work. Hence, this website.

My goal is for this to be a landing page for fiction I’ve published. If anyone runs across my writing in a magazine – or is an agent intrigued by a cover letter – here’s where you can find out more.  And since I’m putting my fiction out there, I might as well blog, too. Lord knows I have plenty of opinions. I plan to update this blog about once a month. I might post less, or I might get inspired and post more, but my Prime Directive as a writer is fiction. That’s what gets my blood pumping, and that’s where I ultimately want my writing career to go. Blog posts are just a fun way to blow off steam. I’ll blog mostly about fiction and the writing life, though I might occasionally stray into other topics. We do live in crazy times. If Donald Trump defunds Medicare to pay for his wall or the North Carolina GOP tries to arm my son’s teacher with an assault rifle, I would be unable to resist commenting. But I’ll keep those few and far between. There are enough political “hot takes” out there as it is.

So, that’s what this website’s all about. This is me putting myself out there. More to come later. Thanks for reading.