Lewis Champion is deep in love with Jubilee Marshfield, and she doesn’t know it. Which is complicated, because she’s his best friend. He tries anything to get the courage to tell her, like acting in a school play alongside her—a huge leap for a wallflower like Lewis. But when Lewis’ awesome grandfather, Paps, dies, the…
The Battle Hymn Blues
Stoney Nix can play anything, from Beethoven to the Blues, on his old rattletrap piano. It’s just a gift, and a good one. Music is his ticket out of Pinewood, Alabama, his ironic, dying hometown, where they reenact the Civil War but cancel marching band because it’s too small. Then Sadie Green, the hilarious and…
A Good Idea at the Time
A collection of six raucous short stories about growing up—starring a vagabond uncle hellbent on corrupting his nephew, and a jazz musician stuck in a saxophone factory, and a crew of regulars watching their town take away their bar, just to name a few. Full of hilarious moments, melancholy, great characters and that signature voice…
297 Story Ideas for Novels and Short Fiction
Don’t let yourself get stuck staring at the blank page ever again. Let this book help you get busy putting words on the page and obliterating your writer’s block! In 297 STORY IDEAS FOR NOVELS AND SHORT FICTION, award-winning author and teacher Baker Lawley uses his fifteen-plus years of experience helping writers write better to…
Regulars
It’s the beginning of the school year, and the University is tearing down establishments all around the Faux Pas Lounge. The regulars at the lounge, who pronounce it “Fox Pass,” are a band of characters–a newspaper columnist, a plumber, a failed painter who begins painting a mural in exchange for a bar tab. They can…
Tracks
Tracks is a gothic story set deep in the underworld of the American South. Rig Nelson lives beneath train track trestles in a jungle of kudzu, banishing himself from society after a terrible accident. But when some young boys stumble upon Rig and remind him of a voice from his past, Rig wants nothing more…
No Jazz in Indiana
This Christmas, there’s a blizzard in Indiana, snowing a family in their trailer without power. Charlie and Jimbo, two young brothers, try to make the best of things, but their father has just lost his job at the saxophone factory. Dejected, their father doesn’t want to play his usual game of riffing with Charlie. His…
Funeral Games
Funeral Games is the gritty story of two small brothers watching as their life crumbles around them. Since their mother left them, their father has fallen into a drunken depression. Worse yet, their ramshackle house was built on a limestone bed and is falling fast into a sinkhole. Narrated by one of the young brothers…