Stories I tell Myself (writing process)

I’ve always loved a good story, no matter who did the telling. I’ve happily listened to older relatives' wacky stories as a youngster. People with the oddest of characters, sometimes darkly humorous, tragic, and often presented with a life lesson hidden between the lines.

As a journalist teetering around parts of the South, I interviewed row crop and catfish farmers, feed store owners, local elected officials, and those who survived the catastrophic floods of 1929, the Depression, and WWII… Well, you get the picture. Often, when the business portion of the interview was over, I would get a second, much more intriguing tale.

As I encountered previous generations, listening to the stories that flavored their pre-tech world, I was intrigued by a collective style of storytelling, often colored with dark humor and quirky observations.

Stories I Tell Myself is a fusion of truth, often flawed secondhand tellings, and my imagination. I tried, mostly, to retell the stories authentically, like Pod and Bobo’s execution of hill justice, Yolando’s betrayal of Edwin and her fears of his finding out, the resurrections of the blue-eyed chihuahua and a frozen corpse, and the book's ghosts. Many of its characters are strangled by poverty and hard circumstances, and most of the stories were written in the early 2000s. Good or bad, peach fuzz or warts, I love each character.

This first collection—so I’ve been told—is like getting lost on a dusty dirt road and finding oneself in the 1970s. Maybe the 1980s.

PS: Yes, a second is planned, We Haven’t Eaten in Years, but its completion is a ways down the road.