After I read J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, I realized as well that my stories about Appalachia served as a counterpoint to Vance’s memoir. Instead of his tough love story in which the survivor leaves the region, I’d written a series of stories in which the survivors stay put and make the best of what has happened to them. To be fair to J. D. Vance, however, my stories are generally set in the years before the opioid crisis hit the region.

Carl Parsons – 22 August 2024

The Back Flap

In this collection of short stories the reader encounters ordinary people struggling with a variety of extraordinary problems that threaten to change their lives: an elderly widower confronting a life of regrets, precocious children threatened with separation, a middle-aged couple facing the loss of their generations-old general store, and many others. Read Town and Country and meet the people of the Mid-Ohio Valley—people you may very well recognize from your own hometown.

About the book

What is the book about?

Town and Country: Voices from the Mid-Ohio Valley is a collection of ten short stories set in the fictional WV town of Parkeston and the nearby rural area of Locust Hill, both bordered by the Ohio River. The real area is known locally as the MOV. While the stories present a wide range of situations and emotions, they share the problem of economic decline that began to grip the area by the early 1960s. The result was a progressively rapid decline in population and quality of life.

When did you start writing the book?

I wrote and published the stories in Town and Country in various journals between 2019 and 2024.

How long did it take you to write it?

Since the book is a compilation of previous writings, it only took a short time to organize it and a bit longer to inform the journals in which the stories were originally published and obtain their permission for republication. All in all, about a month.

Where did you get the idea from?

The stories rather organized themselves into the two settings. It was only after I’d written most of them that I realized the significance of the two settings. Good things tended to happen in Locust Hill (the country) and bad things in Parkeston (the town), though this was not exclusively true. Still, the two settings seemed to feed from each other. After I read J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, I realized as well that my stories about Appalachia served as a counterpoint to Vance’s memoir. Instead of his tough love story in which the survivor leaves the region, I’d written a series of stories in which the survivors stay put and make the best of what has happened to them. To be fair to J. D. Vance, however, my stories are generally set in the years before the opioid crisis hit the region.

Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?

Yes, in the story “Day Star,” I had intended to make the Catholic priest, Father Richter, the main character. I felt I owed him that because he had appeared by reference only in several previous stories and in my novel Locust Hill (serialized online by Spillwords Press). But he had never yet said a word directly to my readers. So I intended to follow him one Sunday after mass to see what the rest of a priest’s Sabbath is like as he visits parishioners in hospitals and nursing homes. But before the first page of “Day Star” could be completed, Gemma, one of the nursing home aides, made the story her own. Read “Day Star” and you’ll see why. Father Richter is still waiting for his own story. Good thing that priests are patient!

What came easily?

Well, since I grew up in the MOV, the settings came easily, both the town and the country. I had lived in both.

Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?

The characters are truly fictitious. I’m much more likely to borrow physical traits from people I’ve met or even from famous people since I have more trouble inventing those. Besides, it doesn’t hurt to have a female character resemble Elizabeth Taylor or a male character to remind the reader of William Powell.

We all know how important it is for writers to read. Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write and, if so, how have they influenced you?

This is a wonderful question. I’ve always loved Southern literature. So for me, that means especially William Faulkner. He had his Yoknapatawpha County, and I have Locust Hill. And we both use repeating characters.

But I also love Eudora Welty’s writing. Her ear for voices and her ability to bring them to life on the page was just extraordinary. Read her novella “The Ponder Heart” and you’ll see what I mean. I think of her always as I’m trying to write dialogue with the ideal that if readers later see just one sentence taken at random from the story, they will know just by its cadence and diction which character spoke it. But this ideal is very hard to achieve consistently.

Do you have a target reader?

Although I’ve written some genre fiction—a political thriller and a dystopian fantasy—I prefer an audience that appreciates literary fiction. I think that is the audience for Town and Country in addition to its obvious regional appeal.

About Writing

Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it?

I begin writing projects—whether short stories or novels—with a sketchbook, similar to a visual artist’s preliminary sketches. The first item in the sketchbook is a clear statement of the complication in the story. That is, a problem that will be of interest to a target audience and which must be solved by one or more of the story’s characters. The problem drives the plot.

Then I sketch out the characters: Who has the problem? What is this person’s background? What personality traits does this person have? And so on with the other characters. As much as possible, I allow the characters to determine the plot actions through their interactions with respect to the complication and to each other. I rely on them for the story’s resolution, which sometimes surprises even me. For example, I had no idea how to end the story “The Hermits of Locust Hill,” but the main character, Brad Kellerman, did. Read the story, and I think you’ll find he did a wonderful job.

Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just chapter headings and a couple of sentences?

I keep outlining to a minimum and focus instead on the characters. Once the characters are established, I find that just a few key points are enough to guide the creation of a new chapter.

Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?

I do edit as I go as well as after I’ve “finished.” Since the writing process is often interrupted by other responsibilities, I’ve found that using a recursive approach to writing works well. So I begin a writing session by dropping back a chapter or two and begin to read aloud. I find that this procedure helps reestablish the pacing of the story and the voices of the characters—both of which are essential to my stories, which are typically heavy with dialogue. This procedure also exposes errors and omissions from previous writing sessions and so minimizes the proofing that my publisher and I must do later. And that makes both of us happy!

Did you hire a professional editor?

No, I have an extensive knowledge of literature from a lifetime of study and teaching. As a result, I have developed my own editorial checklist. Plus, my editor at Wordwooze Publishing, Sheri Orloff, certainly helps me with editing.

Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?

No, I definitely do not listen to music while writing since I find that interferes with the pace of the plot and the cadences of the characters’ voices. But I do love classical music, opera, musicals, and early jazz through the swing era. I get off the jazz bus, however, with bebop. When the melody goes away, so do I.

About Publishing

Did you submit your work to Agents?

No. Despite the great number of agents and agencies, I’ve rarely found them responsive to submissions. I know they must get deluged with submissions, but failing to respond at all is not, to my mind, an acceptable business practice. Yet it seems that the more prestigious the agency or publisher or journal, the more likely that is to happen.

What made you decide to go Indie, whether self-publishing or with an indie publisher? Was it a particular event or a gradual process?

In 2016, when I first set out to become a published author, it seemed to me that the chances for success in writing were much higher on the Indie side of the market, which was then and still is growing at a phenomenal rate. Today, I believe I’m correct in saying, indie authors on average outearn traditional authors, not just in the aggregate, but individually. That marks an incredible and swift transformation of the publishing industry, especially in fiction.

Did you get your book cover professionally done or did you do it yourself?

Because I publish with Wordwooze Publishing, I enjoy the advantages of the Indie market combined to a degree with traditional publishing. I don’t have to pay for the publication costs, the editing costs, or the cover art. Wordwooze has a wonderful artist, Margaret Loftin-Whiting, who takes care of the cover art.

Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?

Ah! Well, the marketing part is mostly my responsibility. After considerable trial and error, I have developed a model marketing plan.

First, apply for book reviews since it takes the reviewers considerable time to read your book and then prepare their reviews. Plus, you’ll need these in your later advertising efforts.

Second, develop and advertise to your own network of contacts, typically via social media and email lists. In just a few minutes I can put news about my book in front of 1.3 million people.

Third, place some initial ads about the book with book promotion sites and newsletters. Once you have some feedback from the reviews, you will want to do this again, this time including favorable quotations from the reviews, assuming you received some.

Fourth, look for opportunities with bloggers and interviewers, such as this one with IndieView, in which you can talk about yourself and your books.

Fifth, attend literary conferences and festivals, conduct local book signings, participate in local author events, and speak to local organizations about publishing and writing. I find it helpful to prepare a separate flier for each of my books. A potential customer may not be ready to make a purchase right away but will readily take a flier and so may make a purchase later. I’ve checked on this possibility, and it does happen.

Sixth, join appropriate writers organizations. I belong to West Virginia Writers, Inc. and to the Independent Authors Network.

Seventh, coordinate your efforts with your publisher. Share the reviews with them, the good and the bad.

Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?

Because writing is such a crowded and popular field, it is easy to become discouraged. But persist. Try to make each story you write better than the previous one—better crafted, better plotted, and most of all richer, deeper characters. And understand how literature works, making general truths from specifics. Read Flaubert on this point.

About You

Where did you grow up?

Not surprisingly, I grew up in the Mid-Ohio Valley, in Parkersburg, WV. At that time, the 1950s and early 1960s, Parkersburg was a prosperous town of nearly 50,000 people with a diverse industrial base. Today the town has shrunk to about 28,000. Many of my stories deal with that problem.

Where do you live now?

I have lived in many places—Roanoke, Richmond, and Gloucester, Virginia; Pittsburgh; Long Island; and Cleveland. But since 1994 my wife, Karyn, and I have lived just outside of Knoxville, TN, in the community of Kodak—within sight of the Smoky Mountain National Park.

What would you like readers to know about you?

I have had four careers: one as a college instructor of rhetoric and literature, a second as a human resources/labor relations manager, and a third as a manufacturing manager—mostly in the automotive industry. Now in retirement, the fourth—I’ve become an author.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a novel tentatively entitled Covalence of Love, a quasi sci-fi, paranormal tale about two polymer engineers, one living  and one dead, who nevertheless manage to communicate in order to tackle the problem of regenerating human organs. The emphasis of the novel, despite its scientific challenges, is on the human (and spiritual) relationships of the characters, so not the typical sci-fi content. All I need to do now is come up with a plausible cure for cancer and a plausible explanation of the afterlife. No problem!

End of Interview:

Get your copy of Town and Country from Amazon US or Amazon UK.