My Next Book: It’s Coming!

This time last year, Mere and I were on a trip to Mt. Rainier and Olympic National Park. When we were leaving Mt. Rainier, there seemed to be volcanoes just about in any direction we went. It was really incredible. I kept thinking about volcanoes for a while, and then I thought about having one in my Alabama backyard. I decided to go for it, and I wrote a book about just that. The book is also about family, responsibility, faith, and the beauty of the natural world, but there’s a volcano that guides it all. The book is very southern. Very rural. Very much full of magical realism. Anyhow, now that book, tentatively titled The Volcano Keeper, is finished!

It’s a novel/novella in vignettes, and it’s a very tender book. Kindhearted. About good people doing the best they can do.

I like to think it’s got bits of Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish, Margaret Renkl’s Late Migrations, and Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street in it.

I’ll start trying to find a publisher soon enough, but know that it’s done.

Some exciting things with Crocodile Tears are coming soon, so that book is still growing and doing. It just has a sibling on the way named The Volcano Keeper…

And here’s a photo of ya boi at the spot where I first started thinking about it: