I give the first half of this book 3 stars and the second half 5. I enjoyed the central narrative line of When Ghosts Come Home, but it could have been more effective and more consistently engaging at maybe two-thirds of its current length. The long backstories on Colleen and Jay in the first half of the novel, for example, seem ultimately unjustified, at least at the length they were left; while they were good backstories for the writer to have in his head and his notes, I found them tedious. I kept hoping that their presence in the text would be justified in the second half, but I didn’t feel that they were—again, not at the length they were left.
Another problem—sticking with the first half—is that much of the writing feels like a first draft. It’s a well proofread first draft, for the most part, but one awaiting a revision that never came. I don’t consider the writing poor. Instead, it’s too often weak. Consider the repetitive “had” structure of Chapter 2; often only a “had” or two is necessary to lead the reader into the realm of completed action, with another “had” or two to lead the reader back out into the simple past. Here and elsewhere I felt almost hammered with “had.”
At other points, the imagery is first-drafty and could use sharpening.
“When Winston pulled Marie’s car into the otherwise empty gravel parking lot at the airport, the only thing he found waiting for him was a two-door white Datsun with North Carolina plates”; in the moment as the narrative describes it, the lot has two vehicles–Marie’s car and the Datsun–and “otherwise empty” becomes confusing.
“. . . the sound of his footsteps falling silently on the ground beneath him”; “sound” and “silently” don’t work together, and the fact that his footsteps fall on “the ground beneath him” needn’t be stated.
Enough grousing! In the end, I enjoyed this novel. But enjoyment was longer coming than it might have been. The turning point was Winston’s confrontation with Vicki in Chapter 9. I’d heard Mr. Cash talk about this scene, and I felt its importance just hearing about it. The potential for smalltown racial tension—particularly as this exists in places like eastern North Carolina—comes to life in When Ghosts Come Home. Relationships are vividly portrayed throughout. While the very long delay of investigation into Rodney Bellamy’s murder was a bit frustrating, the ending twist provided a shot of redemption on that score.
WARNING: The following contains some griping and some sweeping generalization, but these do not negate what I perceive to be true.
Back in the first part of May, Leesa and I visited friends in Nashville, which was fun a usual. We ate and drank with them, hung out in new places and old, had a float (me) and massage (Leesa), and attended my Nashville church West End United Methodist. I did some research for my novel-in-progress.
The only blemish on the trip was that our view of the Nashville skyline was here and there embarrassingly stained by billboards announcing the coming of Trump for a rally on May 24. This isn’t surprising for Tennessee, although I hated to see my beloved Nashville tainted by hints of such baseless adoration.
As always, I wondered and wondered and wondered: “What’s the appeal?” While my wondering has led me to all sorts of speculation and generalization, here’s a simple story that I believe suggests something true about the Trump phenomenon and his adoring base.
When I lived in Nashville back in the 1980s, one job I had for some years was as a clerk in Cat’s Records. During one period, I was assigned to the store on Gallatin Road (or maybe Gallatin Ave. or even Main St.) in east Nashville. I remember this high school girl–I’ll call her Tarah Grump–was shopping in the store one day and told me she was going to see Sammy Hagar in concert (during his pre-Van Halen career). Not a favorite of mine, but hey, if she likes him. . . .
A few days later, she was in the store again, and I remembered to ask her how the concert was.
“It was cool,” she told me. “He said ‘fuck’ like every other word.” Then she said again, “It was cool.”
Nothing about Hagar’s songs or his singing or guitar playing. Nothing about his band or the light show. In a word, nothing of substance.
That’s it, I think — the base appeal of Trump. Like a third-rate stand-up comedian, he just riffs on a bunch of mean phrases and bad jokes that have a base, visceral appeal to his adorers and don’t require any thought or . . . let’s just stop with thought, because if that’s absent or unavailable or checked at the door of the rally or speech or even just an image of DT, then the other things I was going to mention are baseless anyway.
WARNINGREMINDER: The previous contains some griping and some sweeping generalization, but these do not negate what I believe to be true.
I’d already written one song for a movie. Somebody in Nashville—Cathi King or Eugene Epperson or Dixie Gamble—had given me the screenplay for Fresh Horses, a Molly Ringwald and Andrew McCarthy vehicle from the late 1980s. I went for the brass ring and wrote a song called “Fresh Horses,” which was probably both an arrogant and a naïve thing to do—to go for the title song on the soundtrack.
I recorded a demo and submitted it to whichever person asked for it, who passed on to some contact they knew who was working on the project.
No response returned from the void. Without deciding the arrogance-or- naïveté question, I chalked it up to experience—Don’t go for the title song!
I liked “Fresh Horses” regardless, so I added it to my band’s set list and moved on.
A year or so later, Dixie, who was serving as my manager at the time, handed me another screenplay and asked me to write a song for it. Next of Kin had the potential to be a box-office powerhouse, featuring Patrick Swayze, Liam Neeson, Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, and Ben Stiller, who also happened to be in Fresh Horses.
The Gates Brothers in Next of Kin: Gerald (Paxton), Virgil (Swayze), and Briar (Neeson)
The Next of Kin screenplay told the story of three Gates brothers from eastern Kentucky coal country. In order of age they are Briar (Neeson), Virgil (Swayze), and Gerald (Paxton). Briar owns a coal truck and takes pride in the work he does for this local industry. Virgil has migrated to Chicago, where he has married Jessie (Hunt) and become a cop; his beat is Chicago’s hillbilly slums, where he knows the people and speaks the language. Briar and Virgil struggle in a tug-of-war over the future—and soul—of Gerald, the baby of the family. For his part, Gerald tries to pacify both of his older brothers; he moves to Chicago to work, intending to stay only long enough to save the money to buy his own coal truck. He gets a job delivering pinball machines and other games to restaurants, bars, and arcades. The business is, of course, owned by the mafia, and Gerald’s upstanding morals in defending a job and property he believes to be on the up-and-up soon get him killed.
When Virgil returns Gerald’s body to eastern Kentucky for burial, he and Briar fight about justice for baby brother. Virgil begs his family’s patience with the law and its processes, but Briar wants an immediate hillbilly reckoning. After Virgil returns to pursue his investigation, Briar—driving something like a rusted 1939 Chevrolet Half-Ton—sneaks into the Windy City to begin an investigation on his own terms, in the course of which he, too, dies at the hands of the mob.
Virgil then decides Briar’s path is the way to go. He turns in his badge and summons up from southern Appalachia a group of bird-call-communicating, bow-and-arrow-wielding, school-bus-full-of-snakes-driving mountain men to help. The story’s Armageddon takes place at night in a sprawling Chicago cemetery.
Virgil (Swayze) & Jessie (Hunt)
The screenplay ended without any dialogue I can remember, only the description of a scene. The camera hovers just outside the rear window of a vehicle, with Virgil at the wheel and Jessie in the seat beside him. Ahead, seen through the front windshield, is a straight, two-lane highway, running through flatland. Then the camera begins to rise, and as the vehicle moves ahead, we see that it’s Briar’s old pick-up. And then we see Briar’s coffin in the truck bed and the hazy outline of the Appalachian mountains—“home”—in the blue distance.
Homecoming, I thought.
Sitting at the kitchen table with my Guild six-string acoustic across my lap and a handful of open, droning chords in the key of E (E, A, B, C#m), I began to hum a bit of pentatonic melody. The first verse spilled across the page pretty quickly and easily:
If I die in this place so far from home And I never make my living from my native soil again, Don’t leave me where these strangers will walk across my bones. Take me back and lay me with my next of kin.
I couldn’t help it. While I’d learned my lesson about not giving the film’s title to my song, I couldn’t help but slip this second film’s title into the first verse. It just worked.
But then I began to lose the plot, as far as the screenplay went, and my own circumstances and experiences took over.
I’d been living in Nashville since the early 1980s, almost a decade when the Next of Kin screenplay came my way. Plenty of great friends, small successes, and good times had come my way during those years. I’d developed into what I thought was a good songwriter, and I had a great band that seemed beginning to build a little bit of a following. But running parallel with these were significant disappointments—I don’t want to call them failures, even though they might have been. Among these were two major studio albums that were recorded but never released, and major label interest in the band and me that never quite came to fruition. I turned thirty years old in 1988, a milestone for thinking, for reassessing, and I was considering leaving Nashville and going home. My songs from that time suggest that this was on my mind a lot: “Best I’ve Ever Seen,” “There Was Always a Train,” and “Genesis Road,” to name a few.
Two things happened to decide my fate: first, I read the ending to the Next of Kin screenplay and wrote “Homecoming,” turning my eyes toward home in the mountains of western North Carolina, and second, Leesa came back into my life.
After the first verse of “Homecoming,” quoted above, the rest of the song—chorus, a second verse, a bridge—kept loosely to the spirit of the screenplay but more particularly began to express my own feelings. Maybe that’s why the song made it to the last cut (or so I heard) in the filmmakers’ selection process but ultimately didn’t make it into the film. (Another possibility—contributing at least—is the fact that the film didn’t include the screenplay’s ending, for which I wrote the song. Rather than the beautiful highway scene described above, the film ended with Virgil going back to his police chief’s office, getting badge, and meeting Jessie outside on the sidewalk. As it turned out, the film was never the powerhouse it had potential to be.) I’m okay with the song’s not making the final cut—at least I’m over the disappointment. As with “Fresh Horses,” I’m glad to have written “Homecoming.”
But it’s more than being happy to have written in the case of this one. I’ve often said that—“gun to my head”—I would name “Homecoming” as my favorite among the many songs I’ve written.
If I die in this place so far from home And I never make my living from my native soil again, Don’t leave me where these strangers will walk across my bones. Take me back and lay me with my next of kin.
There were many things my father could not say. He turned the sod and swung the rod and kept his feelings locked inside. When things around the homeplace went from bad to worse to stay, He sat in silence with my brother as I said good-bye.
Homecoming dreams are bittersweet to the taste. Homecoming promises are hope to the displaced. They echo through my soul with the distant music of “Amazing Grace.” Let there be a homecoming some day.
I have learned to breathe beneath this sea of light. I’ve won and lost and paid the cost to find a future for myself. But the ties of blood and earth still bind across the years and the miles, And in my memories the old ways still are dearly held.
Homecoming dreams are bittersweet to the taste. Homecoming promises are hope to the displaced. They echo through my soul with the distant music of “Amazing Grace.” Let there be a homecoming some day.
I’ve been cursed as a deserter and prayed for like a prodigal son. Seems no matter where I’ve turned, my loyalties have fallen under the gun.
Homecoming dreams are bittersweet to the taste. Homecoming promises are hope to the displaced. They echo through my soul with the distant music of “Amazing Grace.” Let there be a homecoming some day. There’ll be a homecoming some day.
Postscript: My songwriting practice tends toward the solitary. Nashville—Music Row—was a place of cowriting, with at least two but often three or four songwriters credited on each tune in the Billboard “Hot Country Songs.” (Even as I write this over thirty years later, this week’s number one country song—“The Kind of Love We Make” by Luke Combs—lists four, maybe even five, songwriters.)
I hope to write a monthly Song Stories post for every third Saturday. If anybody reads this and would like to request that I write about a particular song, please feel free to contact me (michaelamoscody@gmail.com).
I was going to Pal’s near campus a couple of days ago. This Chevy Equinox was in the traffic circle before I was, so I followed it into the line. I had to stare at this confusing array of stickers all the way around the drive-thru until finally the Equinox couple picked up their food and drove off.
My snarky voice wanted to ask if they could tell me why they support Israel. And it wanted to ask why they support an arrogant, ignorant man who doesn’t care anything about–or for–them.
Of course, I had to take a picture before they escaped.
Confusion Reigns: I’m somewhat uncomfortable with Jesus being forced into such close proximity to Trump
Ever take a picture that has strange orbs in it and then have somebody tell you that those orbs are ghosts? I’ve taken some pics and seen orbs, but the pics are almost always night shots and the orbs almost always white (like ghosts in sheets) or maybe with a tinge of green. But if you look at the Equinox picture, taken in broad daylight on a hot day, you’ll see two distinct red orbs–one just above the right taillight and one just left of the left one.
I didn’t notice these orbs until today. As I mused on them, I decided they are the metaphysical signs of two red demons of confusion, one for each of the passengers in the vehicle. The higher one on the right is behind the man, who’s probably taller. The lower one is behind the woman who was driving, and she’s probably lower . . . I mean, shorter.
Demons of Confusion!
(tongue in cheek . . . mostly . . . maybe)
Update: I also saw this one a couple of days later:
Confusion & Contradiction?
This vehicle sports both the “In God We Trust” TN license plate selection and a “LET’S GO BRANDON” (i.e., FUCK JOE BIDEN window decal), apparently without any sense of irony or contradiction.
(This one I’m definitely not tongue-in-cheek about!)
Living the Gimmick by Bobby Mathews is a fun novel, a murder mystery set against the backdrop of pro wrestling. The story moves back and forth between the present-day wrestling world and its history over the past thirty years or so. That expanse of time has witnessed tremendous changes in what pro wrestling is and how it is understood by both participants and spectators, the most momentous changes being, one, the end of the wrestling territories at the hand of a predatory promoter who consolidated all the business nationwide and, two, the public admission that pro wrestling is staged—entertainment, not a true catch-as-catch-can competition.
Focused on engaging protagonist Alex Donovan and his search for who killed his friend Ray “The Wild Child” Wilder, Mathews interweaves the history, business, and backstage/in-ring practices of pro wrestling throughout the narrative. Donovan discovers, in the process, who his friend was—or at least who he became in his later years—and that their friendship of over twenty and more years might not have been exactly what Donovan believed it to be.
Bobby Mathews brings Living the Gimmick to life with his insider knowledge of the world in which his story lives. He treats the off-center world of professional wrestling in the USA and in the South particularly (excepting one striking jaunt to Europe) with fairness. The novel balances, for example, the manufactured nature of the wrestling business with the actual athleticism of the wrestlers. Likewise, women wrestlers live and work in the patriarchal world of pro wrestling, and the novel acknowledges this but gives characters like Kat and Penny more reality than women wrestlers are usually granted in the context of the wrestling entertainment.
Publisher Shotgun Honey is building a strong catalogue of crime-oriented fiction. This is my second (following Chris McGinley’s Coal Black), and I have two more high on my to-be-read list. Living the Gimmick by Bobby Mathews is a nice notch on Shotgun Honey’s title belt.
I was happy to welcome the return of Mick Hardin — at the end of another semester and just in time to help get my summer reading revved up. All kinds of Kentucky birds accompany Hardin as he privately investigates the murders of Shifty Kissick’s boys, Barney and Mason. The oldest brother of the Barney and Mason — Raymond — arrives from California to help Mick. A potential love interest appears, briefly at least, and we witness Mick and Raymond doing their military to abort an apocalypse in a teacup of narcotic and environmental bad behavior.
Again, the Appalachian settings and characters are beautifully rendered, and Mick fits so well within the place and people. Offutt’s Rocksalt, Kentucky, and its environs become as familiar to the reader as they are to Mick. His emotional struggle with finalizing his divorce and his rather bumbling but charming attempts to relate to and support his sister Linda, who is running for reelection as sheriff, also ring true.
All in all, Shifty’s Boys is another satisfying Mick Hardin novel.
Another powerful book from James Lee Burke. The setting in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana is rendered beautifully. Eighty-five-year-old Aaron Holland Broussard lives the story and tells it well, with descriptions and insights in language that is often both lovely and unsettling. The novel is powered by significant personal (parental) loss in the death of a daughter – a horrible experience suffered by both author and character – and the troubling trauma of a nation coming apart at the seams.
The poisonous energies splitting these seams include racism and white supremacy, an ignorance that is nationwide and best represented out in the world the novel reflects by fools for the Confederate flag and January 6 insurrectionists. The malignant energies of greed disguised as a defense of rights – fools for the 2nd Amendment, which was never intended to be used for gun-lust (a foolish and frightening swirl of gnawing fear and hunger for perceived power) – and of any religion based on exclusionist fervor and not on love of all (all means all, y’all).
All of these power grabs – racism, gun-lust, exclusionary religion – are deep infections in the past (and present) of the United States, and they are represented in the ghostly, spectral character of Eugene Baker, the military monster ultimately responsible for the Marias River Massacre on January 23, 1870. In Every Cloak Rolled in Blood, Baker is the scary representative of the US’s brutal past. The weak-minded – those without purpose or capacity for any thought or love that is unselfish, benevolent – fall under his spell and do his evil bidding. Ignorance is a vacuum into which he thunders. But to stand up to him – with clear and energetic thought, with love, with goodness – is to learn he is finally ineffectual, having no power other than – beyond what – we give him.
Here are some of my favorite general comments about A Twilight Reel, posted either to Amazon or Goodreads by actual readers (i.e., these are not actor reenactments). I’m grateful for and gratified by each of these insightful comments, and thankful for the readers who took time to read and respond.
A Twilight Reel is a short story collection whose specificity of place and time put me in mind of, yes, Joyce and Faulkner, but also Alice Munro and Elena Ferrante — writers whose work is so stamped with the imprint of a region and culture that I feel like I’ve been to those places, and not as a tourist but as a full-fledged member of the community.
. . . And although set in 1999, it is timely enough to call into sharp relief the seemingly unbridgeable divisions we currently live with in American society. And it does this without going anywhere near a soap box. Several books have been recommended to me by conservative friends since 2016 to help me “understand.” None have come close to this book in terms of providing a relatable, believable, fleshed out, functioning world in which these divisions are explored. BIG caveat here: I do not in any way believe that Michael Amos Cody set out to make a political statement. I would hate to saddle such a terrific piece of writing with that kind of intent. The author wants to capture the place and people where he grew up. That’s what he’s done and that’s what makes it so effective.
12 months. 12 stories. Seemingly ordinary people with far from ordinary stories. A touch of Twain, Wilde, and O. Henry woven through a year’s worth of tales from the denizens of the fictional town of Runion, NC. . . . Michael Cody continues the prosaic brilliance displayed in his novel Gabriel’s Songbook that provokes the reader into rapidly turning pages out of pure enjoyment fueled by the anticipation of what is to come with each passing page.
I have finally (late in life) discovered the joy of reading! Twilight Reel was a great read and I felt after finishing each story that I wanted to KNOW MORE about what happens in the life of Cody’s characters! I liked the mention of characters from his novel, Gabriel’s Songbook, which was another very enjoyable read!
A Twilight Reel belongs to a rare, wonderful breed: undeniably “literary” fiction that still reads like a guilty pleasure. These stories would be lauded in an MFA workshop—but you should also give the book to your cousin who hates to read! Much has been said about the book’s refined virtues, and I’ll add some more. But let the reader first know that Cody has so exquisitely described a place, that its particularity becomes a portal to wherever you are; has birthed compelling characters you badly miss when you finish the book; and has crafted narratives that drive the reader through even the most meticulous literary craftsmanship. . . . This is surely a collection of stories for readers interested in understanding contemporary Appalachia. But Cody’s fictional town of Runion, North Carolina is no more restrictive to his vision than Hawthorne’s Salem or even Balzac’s Paris were to them. These stories are, as Paine wrote of Common Sense, “the concern of every [person] to whom nature hath given the power of feeling.”
In A Twilight Reel, Michael Amos Cody creates a mosaic portrait of the fictionalized town of Runion, North Carolina, with each of its twelve short stories corresponding to a month of the year. Cody writes about present-day Appalachia without condescension or contrived positivity, portraying Runion’s surroundings and characters with subtlety and sensitivity. As such, Cody’s imagined community compares favorably with Wendell Berry’s Port William, Kentucky in its depth and reach. As in his earlier novel Gabriel’s Songbook, Cody establishes his own sense of place with a keen eye for detail and a heart as big as all outdoors.
If the nostalgic feeling of your small hometown could somehow be embodied in a book, this is it. This collection of short stories, all set in a small North Carolina town called Runion, is unapologetically realistic if you’ve ever lived in a small southern town full of secrets and intertwined relationships. Cody’s work in this collection boasts the kind of raw southern charm that only Flannery O’Connor can parallel. This collection of stories is worth the buy, but note that it’s impossible to just stop at one story, so be sure that you have an entire afternoon free for reading once you start.
The photograph on this book’s cover perfectly suggests the pleasures that await the reader inside. Each story draws you in inexorably, and you find yourself eagerly anticipating the denouement while also slowing yourself down to savor. . . . You know, the way the best stories do. . . . If i could give this collection six stars, i would.
This collection of short stories takes you back to a place where relationships matter and a sense of home abounds. The stories are beautifully written with rich characters. A must read!
A Twilight Reel reminds us of the connections, both expected and unlikely, that exist among people. Michael Amos Cody carefully quilts together the lives of those living in and passing through small town Appalachia, reminding us that it is often impossible to completely know the secrets, intentions, and stories of those who surround us, even though our lives are intertwined.
This was a very enjoyable read. From a character’s simple appreciation of a beverage to their strong memories which modify their current behaviors, Cody seamlessly marries the internal and external lives of these townsfolk. You enter their world and consciousness as individuals and feel them enter the varied interrelationships of small town life. The reach of the area’s history shows its continuing influence in each chapter, whether from ancestral deeds and misdeeds or from the meaning of the Civil War itself. Highly recommended.
Talk about bringing characters, scenery, hopes, fears, tears, love and desires to life, Michael Cody has a way that allows your imagination to be inside the settings. A fabulous collection of stories that brought an outsider into the life of those in Runion.
Haunting, smart, with an eye of compassion for the assorted folx living in the small but changing small town of Southern Appalachia.
The author’s descriptions in each story are so vivid that the reader feels like she is there. When I was reading “The Wine of Astonishment,” I realized my heart was beating out of my chest. The book has numerous accounts of the residents of a fictional town attempting to deal with a changing world while keeping the traditions of their past that are worth preserving. Sometimes, the traditions and beliefs are so strong that no attempt is made to change, grow, and consider the perspective of another. The book helped me to better understand myself and the Appalachian area in which I was reared.
Many of these snapshots have celebratory elements of life, though, especially of the Appalachian slice. The culture is poignant in these stories. . . . Overall, it’s a really solid collection, and I think the snapshots feel a bit like turning the pages of a family album. I highly recommend sitting down and spending some time on the front porch with these stories. 🙂
Here in the early days of the year, I’ve looked through the great reviews that readers have posted to Amazon and/or Goodreads and post some items with my sincere thanks for reading and for taking the time to review (and rate).
One more on “The Wine of Astonishment”: “When I was reading ‘The Wine of Astonishment,’ I realized my heart was beating out of my chest.” See my earlier post on reviews about this story.
“The Loves of Misty Sprinkle”: “‘The Loves of Misty Sprinkle’ remind[s] us of all those things—small and large alike—that we hold close.”
“Decoration Day” & “Grist for the Mill” & “A Fiddle and a Twilight Reel”: “. . . the opus ‘Decoration Day,’ where past and present intertwine and haunt each other, center[s] on that most fitting of set pieces, the Memorial Day gathering in the graveyard that, for some reason, we’re big fans of in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina.”
“Cody has a particular gift for contrapuntal assemblage of disparate elements—people, places, eras. In the superb novella at the center of the book, ‘Decoration Day,’ Cody moves among Civil War re-enactors at a Park Service ceremony, a simultaneous church-sponsored cemetery observance, and the Civil War events that inspired the contemporary events—in particular, the ghastly Shelton Laurel Massacre. In bringing together so many characters and perspectives, Cody dramatizes his character’s observation that ‘these mountains were a mess of allegiances,’ and begins to explain the *how* and *why* of that messiness.
“Cody also has this surprisingly great sense of horror and tension. I didn’t expect to read things that gave me a deep sense of unease and the occasional hair-rise on the arms, but I think Cody gives us a really good sense of the fear that comes from both emotional and physical bits of ourselves. I’d say the most notable stories with this kind of tension is the latter half of cold sweat in ‘The Wine of Astonishment,” the undercurrents of violence in ‘A Fiddle and a Twilight Reel,’ and the realistic boiling-over of ‘Grist for the Mill.'”
“My favorites stories in the collection are ‘Grist for the Mill,’ where the oppressive heat of August simmers and finally boils over on a Runion street in a burst of violence and breaking taboos; ‘A Fiddle and a Twilight Reel,’ the savagery of which viscerally captures the fear of AIDS in Appalachia that I remember from the 90s, tempered here by a transcendent moment of music and defiance. . . .”
“A Poster of Marilyn Monroe”: “And what short story compilation would be complete without a tale where Marilyn Monroe is a central figure?”
I’m well aware that my 2021 reading adventures can’t begin to rival the adventurous list of many, including friends like Melissa H. or Catherine P. C. from Facebook. Obviously I do a lot of reading for my job, which is as a Professor of English in the Department of Literature and Language at East Tennessee State University. But relatively few of the books listed below were read for class. The list includes thirty-six titles, which, if my math is correct, comes to an average of three books per month.
The books are listed alphabetically by last name of the author.
I also read my short story collection A Twilight Reel a couple of times in the first quarter of the year, before its publication late in May.
I’m looking forward to the places I’ll go and the people I’ll meet and be in my 2022 readings, some of which are already in progress. Here’s a sneak peek:
