Short version: if you want to go and have a good time, avert your eyes from this savagely uncompromising review of what played like a child’s model kit—half-assembled, covered in misapplied decals and sticky with goopy globs of airplane glue—of a Star Wars movie. Seriously. Fair warning. Spoilers ahead. If, however, you’re inclined to read exactly how and why […]
“You ever think how different life could be if you could just change one thing?” Okay, I’ll bite: How about if the Axis powers had won World War 2 instead of the Allies, with the United States partitioned by Japan and Germany into two occupied territories?
Filed under Local Kid Makes Good Department: Late to the pop culture party, my exposure to Bennettsville, SC’s principal comedy export Aziz Ansari prior to this Netflix original series was limited to a few episodes of Parks & Recreation. Charming, quick, and quirky of spirit, I enjoyed his character. Ansari’s sitcom sidekick schtick felt familiar in content, but appealing […]
Dang if they haven’t gone and done it. Or so it seems to this longtime Deadhead. Sponsorship. A corporate logo em-bugged in the corner of the youtube screen during the Saturday night live feed from Madison Square Garden, directed by no less a big-time, seasoned hand as Hollywood hit maker (if not precisely auteur) Brett […]
That’s right—not only was my novel Fellow Traveler inspired by the Grateful Dead experience, but its official release in 2012 came on November 1, the Day of the Dead. That I had first seen the band on Halloween night in 1985—a night like forever, as it turns out—only made the decision to have the book […]
Time again for this writer’s report about my various unpublished manuscripts. In this post I will reveal that at least one of these novels will see publication in the next calendar year, although the mechanism for such remains at the moment in a state of TBD. One way or another, however, I feel secure in announcing that in 2016 the […]
One day a few years ago I sat down determined to write a story with vampire in the title, but actually featuring no paranormal elements at all. No editors have as yet been suitably amused enough by this feint to publish it, so in the spirit of Halloween, here courtesy the management of Edgewater County Confidential is […]
With my sabbatical-slash-recovery from the writing of the 2015 Faulkner-Wisdom Finalist and hot-topic literary epic DIXIANA scheduled for this past summer, conveniently and grimly enough, alongside what became the omega point of my mother’s terminal illness, the plan for September had been to dive back into a quote-unquote normal writing cycle. For all sorts of reasons, […]
Andria Kennington McCallister June 4, 1946 — September 7, 2015 James D. McCallister In the last couple of years I’ve found myself tasked on occasion with giving eulogies. Gracious, it must be that time of life for me—middle age. This summer I had a 25th wedding anniversary, and only two weeks ago turned 50. Wow, […]
Almost two years to the day since finishing the first draft of the most challenging project of my writing career, it gives me no small amount of pleasure to announce that DIXIANA has emerged as a Finalist in the 2015 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Literary Competition! May I add that this news came the day before my fiftieth birthday? And […]
