I am working on my first novel titled Mozelle: A Southern Romance of 1850. It will be available digitally and in paper-back. I expect to have it complete in about a year.

Here is the foreword:

“I have attempted in the following pages to give an account of a Southern Romance. What I mean by this is not exactly for me to decide. I hope you as the reader will be able to discern what this storytelling mode means. But, to suggest a few preliminary ideas, I suppose I would define Southern Romance as that which looks at the South through the Eye of Imagination. The South, at heart, is a terrible tragedy. The Romantic spirit it possesses is unique, not like that of the French or American Revolution—something absolutely unique. Its dissolution of time; its horror of slavery; its aristocratic character; its agrarianism. The South dreams—yes—but it dreams a nightmare cloaked in sunshine. As a Southerner, I have a deeply troubled relationship with my culture and heritage, and I think this is the appropriate response. What I have sketched below is a kind of Catharsis for this relationship. I have taken as my subject matter a series of recent events that struck me as emblematic of the South that I know. I have taken these seeds and refashioned them for purposes entirely of my own. Therefore, take everything I am about to say as my own philosophy—my own reading of the situation of the South—its virtues, its flaws, and, most importantly, the Spirit of Forever that intoxicates those who grow up under its influence.“