SOME UPDATES: Nearly everyone I see, it seems, wants to know what I'm writing now, and when the new book will be out. So here are the answers..., and a few new photos for those who have asked.
Forthcoming Magazine Article
I am currently working on an article detailing the fascinating story of the Middle Georgia Gas & Oil Company, which drilled two oil wells in Georgia in 1920. Now, before you say, "There isn't any oil in Georgia," remember, no one knew that in 1919 when--according to the promotors of this company--"a vast pool of oil" was sure to exist under the soil of Washington County in east central Georgia. It's a great tale: Convicts working on a road bed discovered oil seeping out of the ground. A company was formed to promote it, and over the next two years sold thousands of "shares" in the well. It was probably all a scam, but a big one that involved an interesting cast of characters coupled with the heady lure of greed and easy money. Hope to have it out later this year.
New Book Update
My new book, tentatively titled A Killing on Ring Jaw Bluff: The Great Recession and the Death of Small Town Georgia, will be published early in 2013, according to Mercer University Press. I had hoped to have it available sooner, but it takes a while for these things.
I believe the wait will be worthwhile. The book is a both a work of history--detailing the crash of the cotton economy in rural
Georgia in the early 1920s--and a bit of biography of the life of Charles Graves Rawlings, my great uncle. Charlie was a larger-than-life figure who became very wealthy during the Golden Age of Georgia's small towns, only to spend his final years in prison convicted of the murder of his first cousin. If the topic sounds a shade boring, it's not! Read it and you will learn a lot (as I have) about how and why the rural South changed in the 1920s, about the Ku Klux Klan, about the Great Oil Discovery that didn't exist, about arson and murder and bought juries, and many other similar dark secrets that make life interesting.
The book tracks the rise of Charlie Rawlings from his younger days as a livery stable owner to his peak as bank president, railroad president, owner of tens of thousands of acres of land, planter, husband, father and philanderer to his later years serving a life sentence for the murder, a crime he likely didn't commit.
A New Suspense Novel
For the last year and a half I have been diligently working on the Ring Jaw Bluff book. It was a chore, to say the least, as non-fiction is far more demanding than fiction. In the latter, you simply create your world and the characters that people it. In the former, you must discover the truth and be quite accurate about it. I had started on another "Southern suspense" novel set in Savannah, but had put it to one side to devote my energies to finishing the non-fiction book. Now that that's done, I'm back working on the novel.
This work, which I tentative title "The Girl With Kaleidoscope Eyes," introduces a new character, John Wesley O'Toole. He's a defrocked (or is disbarred?) attorney who has been released from prison following a charge of vehicular homicide and is struggling to rebuild his shattered life. As the end of his parole draws near, he is approached by a wealthy man who wants O'Toole to help him locate his missing eighteen year-old granddaughter. Soon, the girl is discovered dead, and O'Toole realizes someone is trying to set him up for a murder he didn't commit. The book has a complex plot with many twists and turns set in the background of Savannah. I think my fans will really like it. (And don't worry, Matt Rutherford may return one day, but he needed a rest!)
New Travel Photos Posted
2011 was a busy year for travel. I have collected a small sample of some of the scenes I snapped in Greece, Paris and Guatmala. Plus a whole album of the Doors of Antigua. (Not a band, in case you were thinking that....) Click on one of the links to connect.
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