Smokey Mountain Breakdown

It has been a busy week this week. I’m facing a weekend of tired.

Yesterday I had three stories accepted by Keyhole Magazine for their issue # 3. They requested I also send a handwritten story in for their handwritten issue. Not sure if they will like that—despite my parochial school education, my handwriting is somewhere between Victorian cursive and doctor scrawl. I am a good doodler. Anyway, I’m very pleased to be accepted by a Tennessee publication. Go over and have a look at them—I think you will like what you see. There are some awesome writers in Issue # 2.

Earlier this week, one of my Southern spec fiction pieces went live on Static Movement. You might remember Carolina Special from last October's scary story cycle. It's a trip with a character based on my grandfather from Spartanburg, SC to Knoxville, TN in 1919. Along the way we encounter some of the ghostly denizens that populate the Southern Appalachians. If you haven't read it recently, the version up on Static is the final, polished version. I find myself in quite good company there, as well.

Scott came by yesterday and I printed off all of the comments from the blog. He asked me to hold the donations for him in my paypal account until he got into his new place. He has a lead on a farmhouse near his job. He’s just overwhelmed by the support, not only from all you guys, but many people here in the community have rallied behind him. This has done much to restore my faith in this community. There ARE angels here fighting the Three-Toe.

I’m hoping for him to do a guest post here on the blog. He wants to also do a letter to the editor at the Newport Plain Talk thanking all of those who have come forward to help him.

Yes, it is still a very dangerous place to live—it’s legendary for that—but the people who really count are good kindhearted folk. I worry a bit that my loyalty towards my friend might once again see me assuming the mantle of the Salman Rushdie of Grassy Fork(not for my elegant, complicated, sometimes enigmatic prose, mind you—but for the hillbilly fatwas laid on my head over the past year). But not speaking out against this terrible injustice and crime would not only be cowardly, but completely unlike me.

The investigation is in the hands of the FBI’s Federal Hate Crime Unit by my understanding. The local authorities do not seem to wish to be involved. That’s all I really know. I’m more interested in getting Scott the support he needs following this atrocity.

Bebe Goatie is doing fine. He’s starting to try out his jumping shoes.