James D. McCallister

author of the Edgewater County series

The Differentiated Man and Apoloteia

Author Offers Information About His Evolving Philosophy Today I present quotes for contemplation from Julius Evola, a problematic but fascinating 20th century Italian philosopher and esotericist in whose works I’ve nonetheless managed to find quite a bit of wisdom. Despite elements of his thinking which don’t jibe with my view of humanity at all, his […]

Spirit Communication Received

Local Author Extols Virtue of Rest Ever start your day by cracking open a book and achieving instant satori, like being in the glare of a white-hot spiritual follow spot, and placed there by the voice of a long-dead author? Welcome to my world. But today’s pre-dawn reading, from Rumi, landed in a manner most […]

Ursula K. Le Guin and The Lathe of Heaven

Local Author Discovers 50 Year-Old Truth-Drop in SF Novel I first read The Lathe of Heaven, a fine science fiction novel by the inestimable writer and thinker Ursula K. Le Guin, as a curious teenager and fan of such speculative fiction. I read the book after watching a television adaptation which had compelled my imagination, […]

SHOPKEEP: A Stroll Down Saluda Ave Changes My Life

A Lunch Hour After Which Nothing Will Be the Same In honor of the 29th anniversary of Loose Lucy’s in Five Points, here’s an excerpt from the memoir about a moment which changed everything. Enjoy.

MoHG Day is Here!

Author Celebrates Release of Penultimate Novel Well, it’s decades in the making, it almost made me (more) famous, it nearly killed me to get right, but now Mansion of High Ghosts is in the world. I’ve never been more glad to be done with one of these projects, but at least I can say that […]

Relevant Quote of the Day

What remnants there were of such a moral order were suppressed by the contemporary sloganeering. And those struggles produced their own strange and terrible conflicts. Much like the era of Church schism introduced by Luther four centuries earlier, the entire world was gripped by an immense unrest. Everywhere lines of battle formed; everywhere bitter enmity […]

Happy Anniversary to Us

Today is the 31st anniversary of the day my wife Jenn and I were married! I shudder to think where and what I would have become without her. Blessings and gratitude to her for putting up with my whole ‘driven and troubled artist’ schtick for all these decades.

SHOPKEEP Excerpt: Highway Song

During the same era as the ‘trailer trash’ saga, one day Pa-paw and I drove over to Hartsville to an auction yard there to look for a particular vehicle he had in mind to sell on his car lot. Little did I know this casual jaunt up U. S. Highway 1 passing Bethune and Cassett […]

Poetry Report: Tolling Lordward

Rejection Slip Society Awards Local Author Highest Honor Nothing thickens the skin of an emerging writer than weathering the storm of rejection slips which come with the game of submission we scribes tend to play. I should know—after twenty years of submissions, I own a stack of NO as tall as one of my doorstop […]

Updated: Social Media is a Cancer on Free Thought

What could possibly promulgate more misinformation than a social media platform with algos designed to promote groupthink through the throttling or sharing of select information? The gatekeepers are corporate social messengers, all right, and the message they promote cannot be trusted. Resist.