In addition to my work in transit I have been freelance writing for over a decade now and publishing work mostly in regional or niche publications like Wiregrass Living, Metro, Mass Transit, International Railway Traveler, Russian Life, and Southern Living.  I created Trip Planner Magazine to fill with writings on transit that were not finding other homes.  I write because it is impossible for me not to and about 18 months the inspiration for a novel struck so I started writing it down.  It took me 14 months to complete and I have been shopping Smoke around to agents since.  It occurs to me that in our day of the internet, e-readers, and viral communication I might as well put the book out in electronic copy to see if I can create some buzz and sell a few copies without the third-party actor, the agent. 

The story is: Alexander Silovich and his wife Amber are new to Ludlow, the Canopy Capital of Georgia whose ancient oak trees lend shade and an element of mystery to a small town struggling with the twin specters of crack and crystal methamphetamine.  The couple buys an historic home, a fixer-upper, and soon become entangled with Abernathy McCallister Hallendale III, a dandy minister and realtor who only sells trailers and foreclosures in the toughest parts of town and country, and Trickett Perkins, a former high school football star who has returned home to Ludlow to fix his old neighborhood.  Trickett’s and Alexander’s neighborhoods are separated by race, crack, and a state highway but Alexander gets enlisted in Trickett’s revitalization efforts as the meth problem turns into an epidemic.  (Planners will find recognize many themes like gentrification, segregation, and new urbanism weaved through the novel.)

Alexander’s new friends’ secrets—murder, drug use, problems with the law—intertwine the three in unexpected ways providing momentum to a story that I consider more literary than popular.  Race is a primary theme even down to the drugs people choose (whites do crank, blacks do crack) but place, the small town South, is essential to the story.  At one point Abernathy points out, “Ludlow may not be big enough to be the buckle on the Bible belt, but it is at least one of the holes.”  The book opens as follows:

                Men in yellow coveralls and respirators pointed the flaming tips of their steel canisters to the ground with one hand and waved at us with the other like the ushers in hell.  The fires clawing the sides of the car had already forced my arm back inside but after half an hour of breathing sooty vapor Amber insisted the windows had to go up, so they did.  It was an ideal day to be headed south, penetrating miles of flames and smoke under a taut blue sky with a cool breeze gently carrying the scent of smoldering underbrush as the flames clung low to the ground and exhaled directly into the road.  This scene was dramatized in the tall and menacing fires portrayed on a succession of billboards along the highway carrying the messages, “Sunday in Church or Eternity in Hell,” “In Hell, It’s not the Humidity.  It’s the Heat,” “Hell, I’d Forgotten That,” or the prosaic, “Hell is not Full. Read Your Bible.” 

                You can read the first few chapters on a Barnes and Noble Nook, Amazon Kindle, or on a smart phone with a free Kindle app, and if you like purchase the book electronically for the low, low price of only $9.99  (I am also working on on-demand paper printing for all you luddites out there).  And if you go that far and you like it you can write a review and perhaps even recommend it to other people your social network.   I appreciate your interest and support.