Musings Of A New Southern Man

I admire those who can put creative power into small spaces. I enjoy the great lyricist who can entice you with a few verses. I also enjoy the work of those who put together movie trailers. Granted, few movie trailers are great, but some rise above the crowd. Take, for example, the official trailer for American Hustle.   It starts out with Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper looking at a Rembrandt that Bale says is a forgery. He asks the central question: Who is the real artist here, the painter or the forger? Then the trailer hooks me with the next phase: Led Zeppelin hammering out Good Times, Bad Times as clips from the movie are reeled out in rapid-fire fashion. As soon as that song hit, I knew I had to see the movie. Why was that trailer successful? Two little things: It leads with a philosophical question that ties into the Abscam investigation that is at the center of the movie, and then it adds a song that says this is going to be a snappy experien...

I woke up in the middle of the night and had one thought banging against my brain. It was relentless, and I knew it was the right thought to have. It said this: "It's time to write new parts of a novel." So, I got up, pulled out my flash drive with the second Daniel Pace novel on it, and I started to work. Writing new material didn't happen. (OK, my above title is a lie. So, sue me.) I needed to reacquaint myself with the parts of the novel I already started. I got fairly deep into this second creation, but I put it aside for more than six months. That was because my first novel in the series needed to be revised. Those revisions took three forms: revisions I know I had to make; a learning experience at Don Maass' week-long writing workshop in Virginia Beach, Va.; and more revisions on what I learned from Don and his team. Those revisions mean going over and over material with which I am intimately familiar. It's vital, but it isn't the most fulfilling w...

I read with glee (in some cases) and angst (in others) as the world of teachers, writers and common people weighed in on the apparent loss of the Oxford comma. The death of the comma turned out to be in error; it was just the Oxford public relations department that was dropping the comma, not the university as a whole. The fire storm that started because of the rumored demise amused me. When I first saw the news, I had only one thought. What took Oxford so long? I am a man raised in journalism. Journalists rely on Associated Press style, which regards the Oxford comma as an unnecessary intruder. It should be written like this, "The American flag is red, white and blue," and not this, "The American flag is red, white, and blue." The Oxford comma died a quiet death in my world during my middle years in college. I first displayed this lack of respect for the Oxford dictates while writing a short piece of fiction for an upper-level English class. The instructor note...

I was young, caught up in the swirl of emotions that go with entering adolescence. I loved going to the movies, and Doctor Zhivago was the movie of the year. I wanted to be swept away by the sprawling story of Russia in the period of revolution. I ended up being swept away by more than that. I fell in love with Julie Christie, in only a cinematic sense, of course. I was enamored. Her beauty was overwhelming. Her skin was flawless. Her hair was spun gold. And there were those eyes. Director David Lean knew the power of those eyes, and he had several shots where Lara (Christie's character) was seen in partial shadow, with those eyes highlighted. Ah, what beautiful moments. What young man wouldn't fall for a woman as beautiful as that? The first crush is always memorable. But what is more remarkable is that I found a love from a beautiful woman that is far beyond anything to be gleaned from the screen. Julie Christie might have been a dream woman, but she was only a dream. ...

... or at least the best of those I read: 3. Where Men Win Glory, by Jon Krakauer. Pat Tillman was an American icon, but not by his own choosing. He was a man who gave up an NFL career so he could serve his country in the aftermath of 9/11. He became an Army Ranger, fought in Afghanistan, was held up as an emblem of what an American could surrender in order to battle for his country, and was killed by friendly fire. Krakauer's reporting skills are at their best here. We get a moving portrait of a complex man and the hell that being in battle can be. This was the only nonfiction book I read this year, and it was worth every second. 2. Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. Amy's introduction to us as a woman falling head over heels for this guy Nick at the start of the book is one of the best set-ups for a novel I have seen in years. She is breathlessly in love, swept away, in awe. But slowly, petal by petal, we see this flower of love begin to fall apart. Amy disappea...

I had to compile a list of the authors whose works I read recently, and I came to an odd realization. I am a reader of male authors, almost exclusively. The one exception in the list is Gillian Flynn and her brilliant "Gone Girl," which by the way is being made into a movie with David Fincher as director. (The buzz is that Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike will play Nick and Amy. Feedback on those choices?) My other reading choices in the past several months? In order, they are: "Live Wire" by Harlan Coben; "The Cold Moon" by Jeffery Deaver; "One Shot" by Lee Child; "Where Men Win Glory" by Jon Krakauer; "The Highway" by C.J. Box; "The Jefferson Key" by Steve Berry; "And The Mountains Echoed" by Khaled Hosseini; and (still in the process of reading) "Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" by Jamie Ford. Next on my list? Probably "Live by Night" by Dennis Kehane, although "Life After...

I have nothing against Steve Berry. My writer friends who have met him at conferences say he is a genuinely nice guy. I admire the work he does through his foundation in advancing the study of history, and the man writes well. The problem is that I don't like what he writes. His specialty is the action thriller, and he masters the genre. He is the king of the short declarative sentence. He keeps his storytelling at a rapid-fire pace. But why don't I like his work? His plots are intricate, and they are nicely formulated. He has a knack for taking historical fact and weaving it into his brand of fiction. What I don't like is that I don't give a hoot about his characters. Cotton Malone is his protagonist. He is a man of action. He has POTUS on speed dial (which is a characteristic of more than a few action thriller main characters). He has a love of his life. I don't care about her, either. Her name is Cassiopeia Vitt. (I can't help but think of Katarina Witt w...