James D. McCallister

author of the Edgewater County series

Spring 2017 Workshops!

Aspiring writers in the Columbia, SC area, take note! Signups are now open for my Spring 2017 workshops hosted by Midlands Technical College. Featuring beginner and advanced courses, plus a basics of screenwriting workshop, my classroom awaits your presence, enthusiasm, and talent.

LET THE GLORY PASS AWAY Promo Art

Here’s a nifty poster that the PR team created for local use in promoting the upcoming release of Let the Glory Pass Away. I think this key art does a fine job of visualizing in an ironic and attractive way one of the novel’s principal themes. Feel free to share it in your social media feeds!

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.

BLUE VELVET Interview in Free Times

Having long made no secret of my affinity for all things David Lynch, last week I found myself interviewed by the local alt weekly for thoughts concerning 1980s cinema classic Blue Velvet, now enjoying special 30th anniversary screenings at our local arthouse, The Nickelodeon.  Thanks to fellow scribe David Travis Bland and the Free Times for including […]

Notes on LET THE GLORY PASS AWAY (Part One)

For those of you following this blog for the last couple of years, it may seem like all-DIXIANA all the time. But before that material sees publication, let’s keep in mind that I’ll be offering up one (or more) direct lead-ins to that long-gestating novel series, with its fully realized fictional world I call Edgewater County. […]

DIXIANA and The Bradbury Method

“I’ve tried to teach my writing friends that there are two arts: number one, getting a thing done; and then, the second great art is learning how to cut it so you don’t kill it or hurt it in any way. When you start out life as a writer, you hate that job, but now […]

Prince Dead at 57

UPDATED: Here’s a link to an audience recording of Prince’s final concert last week in Atlanta. He sounds fine to me. — Wow, shocking news. So here’s my important personal Prince memory… It’s almost 34 years ago, Saturday night. I’m 17 and driving home from work at Mickey D’s, the first ‘real’ job I’ve had […]

My Tidbit in David Browne’s SO MANY ROADS

As documented on this blog and elsewhere, in November 2014 I was fortunate and honored to present Fellow Traveler at the national Grateful Dead academic conference called So Many Roads: The World in the Grateful Dead. It happened that my panel included Rolling Stone and Men’s Journal contributing editor David Browne, who had a new biography of the […]

Pat Conroy Dead at 70

Not much to add this morning that many fine obits haven’t already, except to note that on a personal level, this hurts deeper than I can fully describe.

Rebuilding Year Now in High Gear

To explain: on both a professional and personal level, 2015 represented a year of culmination for this Southern author. Not only did a tumultuous, inspiration-ridden multiyear cycle of primary compositional work on my novel series DIXIANA draw to a conclusion in May, but the same month my mother’s long battle with illness came to a grim […]