James D. McCallister

author of the Edgewater County series

The Time We Pulled Tape at Dylan: Remembering Clay Brennecke

Clay B and me, front of board, mics well hidden, we made a fine, fine tape.  Not my best writing, this haiku, but I composed it while grieving over the news that my old friend Clay had passed away, and under personal circumstances of a sudden and tragic nature. Maybe I wanted to cheer myself […]

THE MIDDLE OF THINGS

I’m late to the party on this 2015 New Yorker post, but I found it quite useful and edifying. THE MIDDLE OF THINGS: ADVICE FOR YOUNG WRITERS By Andrew Solomon The following is adapted from a speech the author gave at the Whiting Writers’ Awards on March 5th. When I had just finished my schooling and […]

A Stroll through the Knausgaard: A Review of My Struggle, Vol. 5

I wanted to write, that was all I wanted, and I couldn’t understand those who didn’t, how they could be happy with an ordinary job, whatever it was, whether teacher, camera operator, bureaucrat, academic, farmer, TV host, journalist, designer, publicist, fisherman, truck driver, gardener, nurse, or astronomer. How could that be enough? I understood it […]

Book Review: BEAR by Robert Greenfield

In 1985, when I became initiated into my new life as a latter generation Deadhead—it’s called “getting on the bus,” referencing a lyric from the Dead’s psychedelic classic “That’s It for The Other One”—I had certainly heard of Augustus Owsley Stanley III. As an aficionado of the 1960s social revolution I had missed by virtue of […]

Edgewater County Confidential Returns!

Some of you may have noticed that Edgewater County Confidential has been dark all summer. Inactive. It’s been quiet around here—too quiet.  It’s all good. Two words to keep in mind (with props to Douglas Adams): DON’T PANIC.