I was born in Fayetteville, NC in 1959, and grew up there in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. What’s that you said? Did I hear you ask, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? No, my hearing is not that keen.
My wife and I have lived in Charleston, SC for 20 years and raised two kids here. Now we spend about a third of our time in Winston-Salem, NC. What’s that you just said? Another Southern writer? Yes, and not as young as he used to be. But neither was Frank McCourt for that matter. So maybe there is hope. Even for a man from a proverbial Southern Nazareth.
My first degree came from NC State University (1981) and it earned me my first job out of college. In Louisiana. In the offshore oilfield. In Morgan City. Another proverbial Nazareth. And then, blessedly, on to Larose, LA to sojourn there for a while among the Cajuns on the banks of idyllic Bayou Lafourche, “the longest Main Street in the world.” Read, deep Acadiana.
Then, for some reason, it must have been related to my propensity to do things the hard way, I returned to North Carolina, to Chapel Hill, to obtain an MBA (no, not MFA). And in gaining it I unwittingly but completely devalued my perfectly serviceable BS in Civil Engineering. And I must admit to some confusion now whether I, like the first Adam, have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, or I, like Adam’s venomous nemesis the snake, am cursed. Recall the curse, “upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.”[1]
Of course, work and family followed. And now finally, I have taken to writing in earnest.
Over the last couple of years, I have written two books. Neigh, manuscripts. Click on the “Manuscript” page in the menu to view thumbnails of Tarheel Infidel in the Holy City, and The Bayou Blue Oilfield Chronicles.
Then, there is the play, The City Market, 17,421 words of it. Things like this can happen when a short story writer returns to Hemingway just long enough to re-read and take inspiration from his little red cloth-bound eponymous book containing the play, The Fifth Column.
My next project is a historical novel featuring the Moravians. Beginning with their settlement of the 100,000-acre Wachovia land grant, bridging the time between 1752 and the present, in and around current day Winston-Salem, NC. I am researching it now.
[1] Genesis 3:14