James D. McCallister

author of the Edgewater County series

MoHG Covers Evolve

Author Cautions Key Art May Change As the subhead disclaimer indicates, the Mansion of High Ghosts covers will continue to evolve… but as of this writing, this key art is getting close. Still to be done is the trade paper version. Here’s the (evolving) flap copy: Where these folks are going, bless their hearts, they […]

MoHG Looking Spiffy

The Original Edgewater County Novel Approaches Publication I’d be lying if I suggested I wasn’t tickled to finally bring Mansion of High Ghosts, legendary around these parts, to publication later in what will surely be the go-go summer of 21.

Remembering Doug Dawson

“There’s nothing you can hold for very long.” ~Robert Hunter I first encountered Wallace Douglas Dawson III a few months before we were formally introduced. We were the same age, on the same track—media arts—and so it happened that we shared one of the non-core classes all college students are expected to take: a modicum […]

Review: CORPUS CHRISTI

Must-see Polish Drama Packs a Spiritual Wallop Streaming exclusively on the Criterion Channel, Jan Komasa‘s Corpus Christi (in Polish: Boże Ciało) represents the sort of compelling character- and theme-driven drama that American cinema, even on its recent best day, seems incapable of contemplating, much less producing and distributing to a wide audience.

My Special Boy

Yesterday was as hard as it gets for a lover of pets. Arthur would have been 16 this year. His last few months included worsening health challenges. We thought we were losing him back in August, in fact, but he bounced back to have a wonderful renaissance all through the autumn and into the new […]

Poem of the Day

Another short one for a sunny, cold Saturday as I head to work at the hippie shop.

Stylized Vision

A poem reflecting the attitude expressed in this prior post. Stylized Vision   Traveling for sense where one privacy place verges through to the high shows never to happen   Phoenix syllables in the maybe-here wait to cop what gone-books leech the given spring within him   A time-lightning relationship Now has called the next […]

Social Media Exit (Redux)

I kicked off tumultuous 2020 by proclaiming I was done with Facebook… only to come ROARING back in March to discuss world events; later, I would act as citizen journalist by live-streaming the initial local BLM march to over a thousand viewers. I spent many hours on the platform doomscrolling, arguing, trolling. Yep. It had unfolded […]

The Real Rub

Change is in the air.

The Night I Prayed to Elvis

Here’s the title story from an upcoming collection of linked stories. It’s more about nostalgia, mood, memory and tone than any deep literary insights or big moments. This material is from much earlier on my writer’s journey, nearly 20 years, and often reads that way. The Night I Prayed to Elvis The war with Daddy […]