Tim Bryant's Blog: Writing in South Carolina

My third novel, The Stained Glass Mustang (Unsolicited Press) is now listed with Goodreads. It's about John Williams, a successful Charleston, South Carolina, adman, who loses everything after driving drunk. His only client is a blasphemous small-time internet scammer who has him over a barrel until he inherits a vintage muscle car that arrives painted over with scenes from the life of Christ—perfect for whitewashing the client’s bad reputation. A vivacious single mom with an irresistible Spanish accent says exploiting the art will insult God—leaving John caught in the middle as he seeks a path to redemption.

It's a gritty and darkish—described as a serious literary novel bridging faith, capitalism, Southern identity, and redemption.

Contact me for an Advance Reader Copy (ARC).

Thanks for looking!

In the wake of Blue Rubber Pool (2018) and The Bird in Your Heart: A Carolina Sea Island Story (2023), my third novel, The Stain Mustang, will be published by Unsolicited Press in May 2026.

John Williams, a successful Charleston, South Carolina, ad man, loses everything after driving drunk. The only client he can get is a blasphemous small-time scammer who has him over a barrel…until John inherits from his estranged father a vintage sports car that comes to him painted bumper-to-bumper with scenes from the life of Christ. His client says it’s perfect for whitewashing bad reputations but an attractive Honduran jewelry artist says using it that way is a sin against God. Caught in the middle, he must find a path to redemption.

I hope you'll like this new book categorized as literary fiction/Southern fiction. Limited ARCs available still (contact me if interested).

The London-based Sylvia Plath Society, a global community of scholars, artists, students, and fans who love or want to know more about the poet Sylvia Plath, has published my review of Virginia Aronson’s Little Smiling Hooks, a collection of Plath-channeling poems, in their membership newsletter! Hell yeah they did! Even my bits about Pineapple Hill being a beach house in a cow pasture where I do most of my reading on the hot tub or second floor hammock!
Here’s a link to The Sylvia Plath Society’s “Who We Are” content—including their Second International Plath Zoomposium. https://www.sylviaplathsociety.org/wh...
Here’s a link to my review in their newsletter. https://mailchi.mp/.../newsletter-spe......
And a link to other reviews I’ve written. https://armadilloisland.com/category/...
Well alrighty then. That's all I've got to say about that.

This week I signed a publishing contract for a novel to be launched in 2026. It'll be the fourth one.

My first, Blue Rubber Pool, set in rural South Carolina and South America, is a love story disguised as the memoir of smuggler trying to retire. It was released by a small publisher in 2018 then self-published in 2023.

My second had the working title of Birdwatching on Edisto but too few could pronounce Edisto and the rest mistook it for a field guide. Regal House sat on it for what seemed like forever so I self-published a few months ago. It's set on a Carolina sea island and titled The Bird in Your Heart.

I'm currently finishing what may well be the final draft of a novel set at an old hotel beside the sea. My plan is to self-publish to fill the gap between now and 2026.

After the fourth comes out in 2026, I should have a fifth one ready.

Reading Abbie Hoffman's autobiography titled "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture" and he comments on MLK's life work toward equality but never mentions equity. Equality connected with so many of us. King certainly influenced my life. I wonder what he would have thought of equity instead of equality. Your thoughts?

A new discovery for me. Anyone else into John Fant?

A dog chasing its own tail.

First stereotyping blacks. Now stereotyping whites. ‘Round and ‘round it goes. Unable, it seems, to let go of itself.

I consider myself a Southerner, not by birth but by preference. To me, the South is warm, easy, rich with the kinds of flowers, trees, and birds I like most. With foods that make me feel at home.

I’ve never met a plantation owner. Just mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, farmers, and former “lint heads” (people who worked in textile mills before NAFTA shut them out). I’ve never met a slaveowner, obviously, only people who agree that slavery was wrong.

So I wonder what to do about myself as a writer living in the South writing about people and places here, about some of ways of the South I find interesting, worth weaving into stories.

Am I a racist? I hope not. I don’t mean to be.

Have I benefitted from white privilege? I imagine so. How could I not—having been white in a white majority location. The South, yes. But also the nation. And most of the planet as well.

This morning I read a Literary Hub article called The Troubled Task of Defining Southern Literature in 2021. The author, Ed Tarkington, had interesting things to say about the current transformation of Southern literature—the nurturing of greater diversity as the South looks for its best voice in time of rapid change. There was a line that stays with me. In mentioning his discovery of Brad Watson’s debut story collection, Last Days of the Dog Men, he said it “redefined what was possible for a bookish Southern white boy uncomfortable with the idea of ‘Southernness.’”

What is Southernness? Yes, the South has bad things woven into its fabric. Slavery. Lynchings. Jim Crow laws. The Southerners I have met, same as the Northerners I have known, believe those things were awful, believe the world is capable of doing much better, believe progress is being made.

Of course there are some people that disagree. But they are only to be found in the South. The South doesn’t own the patent on intolerance. Nor do white people. Intolerance isn’t a white thing only. There’s a lot of it being doled out these days from all across the rainbow.

Which brings me back to my situation as a straight white male living in the South writing about Southern places and people…

I’ve written a novel about a white, straight, middle-aged Southerner who divorces and loses his job at an Atlanta ad agency. His plan is to visit his mother on the Low Country sea island where he was born and raised. He’ll stay a few weeks while shopping for a sailboat worthy of sailing away from his trouble. It turns out, however, that his mother is quickly losing her eyesight while the generation-old familial estate needs extensive repair. Darkened portraits of his great-grands guilt him into staying.

It was short-listed but not accepted by a mid-sized publisher cultivating Southern stories and Southern writers. They said they liked the manuscript—including changes made after they requested a revise and resubmit. They said they liked my marketing plan. They said they even liked me (based on a Zoom meeting). So why didn’t they take it? I suspect that’s because I’m not POCLBGTQ+.

Check out listings for publishers and agents these days. In 2017 there were ones stating ooenly on the internet for all to see that they would welcome Southern authors and Southern stories.

They’re all gone now.

Why?

Where to?

Am I supposed to be, as Ed Tarkington said of Brad Watson, a bookish Southern white boy uncomfortable with the idea of Southernness?

If so, my latest novel is screwed. I’m screwed. The world is screwed.

It’s one thing to be uncomfortable with wrongs of the past. The way past and the recent past. I’m sorry those things happened although they were things I didn’t do, didn’t condone through silence as they happened. As far as I’m concerned, they’re not on me, they’re on people long gone from this world and maybe a small number of hold outs. Most of us have moved on, have learned from those mistakes and built that awareness into how we carry ourselves. I don’t agree that sons should be punished for the sins of fathers. No, I can’t go along with that.

So, while as I’ve mentioned, I’m uncomfortable with the wrongs of the past, I’m not at all ashamed of my Southerness. In fact, I’m proud of it, proud of the things of this place, it’s flowers, trees, beaches, foods, and climate. And of what’s in our hearts here. Demonstrated by our improvements, our enthusiasm for moving forward.

I worry about so much censorship happening. So many babies being thrown out with the bath water. Where are we going with this if we follow along? As we search for our one voice, how can we ever find it when all voices aren’t included. Not just POCLBGTQ+. But ALL.

Your thoughts?

# # #

It’s cold outside. Another winter presses down on Pineapple Hill, my beach house in a cow pasture in rural South Carolina. The sky is pale gray, despondent, ragged where bare branches of a forest reach up like claws tearing, scraping, leaving scars.

Usually, it’s summer when I read and review. Mid-morning in the sunny hot tub surrounded by banana trees and bamboo. Or late afternoon in a hammock on the porch where Honeysuckle has come in through the screen, a ceiling fan barely moves and, down below, looking out across the pasture, deer leap like children in tall grass.

Yet here I am, hunkered down against the weather same as the cow standing motionless in my field way out on its own like a package left out in the rain. I have come to my office with black-as-evil coffee very hot in a hard brown mug carrying also Virginia Aronson’s latest work, Little Smiling Hooks, a collection of poems about Sylvia Plath.

Plath the poet and novelist. Plath the confessor. Plath the diagnosed, drugged, suffocated, bathed in ice, wrapped in wet sheets, hard jolted, shot up, prodded, discussed and analyzed, written about and studied, gossiped about and feared, lyricized and revered, made into flesh and poetry. The Plath, as Aronson says, “married, beaten, baked in an oven…served cold.”

Plath the suicide reborn as a thin, wan waif with long stringy hair refusing to come away from the corner. The corner is safe. The corner is time eternal. A coffin and a vault. Serene. Aronson coaxes her out poem by poem, step by step. Out to where the light is better albeit still dark, still sad, angry, and even hideous at times.

If you know Plath well, these poems carry the full weight of Plath’s truth. Aronson clearly knows the Plath biography. And , as important, she is able to present it through a Plath-like filter. Aronson has wounds of her own and she has written about them in her book J’Adoube: Stories (previously South Florida Spin). For this reason, I think of Aronson’s poems about Plath as like clay pots spun with Plath-like hands.

For instance, the title Little Smiling Hooks alludes to bees, a steady presence in Plath’s world. Her father Otto, a German, was an entomologist who made a study of that insect and Plath, with her abusive husband ,Ted Hughes, kept bees when they lived in England. Bees, with their stingers, were all around Plath. And she was stung. A lot. All of her life. Hurting her. Making her bitter. Plath’s poems and semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar were about those stings and how vicious they were though disguised as benign. Of The Bell Jar, Plath said, "What I've done is to throw together events from my own life, fictionalizing to add color—it's a pot boiler really, but I think it will show how isolated a person feels when he is suffering a breakdown...”

Plath is all about self-reflection and, it seems, attempts to exorcise her demons. Such a deep diving venture is dangerous enough when pursued on one’s own. Deadly when encouraged by a dark-natured soulmate. In Plath’s case, the prodding came through her relationship with fellow poet Ted Hughes. Numerous Plath scholars believed he pushed her to descend too far—to suicide, actually.

In a poem called Wintertime, Aronson writes this in empathy:

…Mr. Face-the Wall
will teach her to
dig bare hands in his skull
and he in hers
prying open the trapdoor
to self-expression, rage.

The Plath-Hughes relationship was passionate, competitive and, ultimately, toxic. In the beginning, it ran red hot, centered on writing and writers. However, in time, Plath finds herself housebroken and uninspired.

In Flat Life, Aronson puts it this way:

The woman drags her shadow
around the room in circles
nothing stinks like a pile
of unwritten verse.


Aronson channeling Plath is heavy, heady stuff that goes way down to where the marrow has soured.

Like I said: If you know Plath well, she comes back to life on every single page of Little Smiling Hooks.

# # #

I've been away, doing other things. Among them, completing a novel then responding to a "revise and resubmit" request from a mid-sized publisher focused on Southern stories/Southern authors. The manuscript was set on Edisto Island near Charleston, SC, and about a middle-aged Atlanta advertising executive who, recently divorced and unemployed, planned to buy a boat to sail away from his troubles—the plan foiled when, during a visit to the small sea island where he was born, he learns his mother is losing her eyesight as the generations old estate needs extensive repairs. My revisions made me one of eleven finalists competing for a handful of slots with said publisher. Then, for unexplained reasons, I was kicked to the curb. Oh well. I've set that story aside to ferment or fester of whatever it needs to do while I work on another one, also set on the coast. I like to write. I don't so much like looking for a publisher again. My friend Mickey Corrigan says manuscripts aren't finished until they're out there for others to read. I wonder. My first book, Blue Rubber Pool, is out there for peeps to read...but is anybody picking it up? I wouldn't mind a few reviews. Good or bad.

Based on my enjoyment of Mickey J. Corrigan’s novel What I Did for Love and then The Physics of Grief, I look forward to reading her new release All That Glitters, scheduled for release on January 26. Buy it here. In the meantime, here’s her response to amazing, ingenious questions sent from Pineapple Hill recently:


Q. First of all, describe the Mickey J. Corrigan body of work in terms of the novels. Are these a series featuring the same protagonist across multiple stories? Why or why not?

A. The novels are all stand alone with different characters and plots. The only series I've had published ("The Hard Stuff") consists of four novellas, each featuring a different protagonist but all set in the same fictional town. My novels do not have the same setting or characters, but they do share features. Typically, the protagonist is a strong young woman dealing with or committing crime, involved in a challenging romance, and facing her own dark side. She's smart, independent, troubled and in trouble. Many of the novels are set in South Florida, where I live. A sunny place for shady people, this tropical paradise provides the perfect environment for quirky crime—in real life and in fiction. One of my novels, however, is primarily set in Boston, where I am from, another in New York City. I like to immerse myself in the mind of a fictional person and see the world through their eyes, so I can widen the view I have of life. I guess that's why each novel features a different protagonist with different obstacles and issues to overcome.

Q. Describe the Mickey J. Corrigan author persona. How was it formed? What are its key characteristics in terms of mindset, outlook, and behavior? Who the hell is Mickey anyway and who is her ideal audience? What type of person will most likely be attracted to Mickey?

A. Mickey was created after I began writing fiction because I had already published quite a bit of nonfiction in the form of serious minded books. The fiction I was writing was totally different, the voice nothing like the more formal one I used for my nonfiction. I chose a gender neutral pen name so that I could write first person accounts for both a male and a female protagonist. MJC is looser than I am, drinks a lot more than I can, and has a much more chaotic and adventurous life. My daily life is pretty straight, disciplined and dull, so I allow my suppressed wild side to emerge through the characters Mickey creates. People who like MJC books have a dark sense of humor, they like to read quirky fiction about women with minds of their own, and they appreciate surprising stories that do not follow a formula but take them to places they might not expect.

Q. Describe your writing process in terms of getting a new story going. Do you begin by writing freely or do you begin with an outline?

A. I avoid outlining and often am not sure where a story is headed. I begin with an idea, a concept or issue I want to explore. Some writing teachers say to never do this, they advise us to begin with a character or setting, and to outline very carefully. I say each to their own. The ideas that launch my stories are all different—talking to ghosts, being hired to kill cheating husbands, getting paid to attend funerals, falling in love with a sex offender or a student half your age, planning a school shooting, counseling disturbed people during a pandemic. I do a lot of research so the voice of the protagonist will sound authentic. I learn a lot about some esoteric subjects that way.

Q. You’re originally from Boston but have lived in South Florida for many years. How have these two places influenced your body of work?

A. I'm Irish-American and well educated due to my Boston upbringing. I have a dark sense of humor and enjoy bars, crazy stories, and unusual people. Florida provides all of that without the cold and snow, which is why I'm still here instead of back up north in my hometown. I love the tropics, the lush vegetation, exotic animals and insects, postcard perfect skies and white sand beaches. Residents and visitors from all over the world bring variety and excitement to the area. It's a beautiful, interesting place to live, but it's troubled. Like a gorgeous woman who draws you into terrible situations but makes it worth your while. At least, the writer in me sees life here that way.

Q. Do you address social issues in your stories? If so, which ones—and how?

A. I do address contemporary social issues in my novels, and in fact usually begin a book with one in mind. Some of the topics my characters confront include school shootings, mental illness, alcoholism, predatory teachers, the sex offender label, domestic violence, depression, college debt and prostitution. By allowing my characters to approach and wrestle with such issues, I try to offer readers viewpoints from lifestyles that might differ from their own. My characters are not politically correct, which earns my books some scathing reviews but also can broaden a reader's perspective. Researching and writing about such topics has helped me to expand my own understanding of some complex social issues.

Q. Is there a future in novel writing for older, straight, white Southern males? Should they be squeezed out to make room for underserved races and genders?

A. In my opinion, no writers should be squeezed out of the publishing world if they have talent and a good story to share. Writing is inclusive, anyone can do it, but publishing has not always been that way. It's great that publishers these days tend to invite manuscripts from all kinds of authors with all kinds of backgrounds. But I sure would hate to see publishers choose the novels they publish based solely on an author's age, race, ethnicity, or sexual identification. Some writers complain that male authors get the important reviews and preferential treatment, while others think that women and minorities are receiving all the contracts. How can both be true? The best approach for any writer is to work hard at the craft and be persistent in the search for a publisher. If you have talent and patience and a viable story to share, your identity should not get in the way.

Q. How might the writing and publishing communities be further impacted by polarized political influence?

A. This has become a major obstacle, I think, for both writers and readers. It's tricky for publishers these days to release books that might cause an uproar on social media because an author is writing from the viewpoint of a minority group to which they do not belong or being politically incorrect in some other way. Often the publisher has a choice to make when an author gets cancelled by half the population but is revered by the other half. Meanwhile, readers miss out on books that might help them to open their minds to new, opposing, or less polarized viewpoints. And writers are not producing their most creative or impactful work while trapped within the narrow boundaries imposed in order not to offend anyone. Here's the thing: the artist's job is to offend us, to wake us up and shake us up and spur us into thinking about life in new ways. But if the businesses that foster the arts are restrained by public outcry and mass shaming, then artists cannot flourish, invent, grow and inspire. This is unhealthy, because it is socially and intellectually limiting for writers, publishers, readers, and just about everyone else.

Q. Is cancel culture fascist?

A. Whoa, what? I thought we were talking about writing and publishing? Oh, I see, you want to know what I think about cancelling authors and politically incorrect books. In my opinion, book banning is indeed a form of fascism—one that has long plagued this country. In the relatively recent past, sex and profanity resulted in important books being banned in schools and libraries, even removed from circulation and pulped. Topics that were once deemed "immoral" caused writers to limit their subject matter. It used to be the religious right calling for books to be outlawed. Now the virtuous voices of cancel culture are coming from a different place, but their outcries sound the same to me: this offends me so nobody should read it. It's Fahrenheit 451, dystopian and oppressive. The arts are suffering and we are too.

Q. Will printed novels eventually be replaced by digital and audio formats?

A. I hope not. Digital books were a novelty hit and a threat to the printed format when they first became available, and many people prefer to use a digital reader. Audio books are popular because you can listen while you drive, work out, or wait in line somewhere. But enough of us prefer to have a physical book in hand, so there continues to be solid demand for print. During the first year of the pandemic, a lot of books were sold in every format. This, to me, is one positive note from a terrible year: more people buying books.

Q. Do most novelists today earn a living from it?

A. Nope. But that was never the case. Being a novelist is like being a tennis pro or a chess master: you don't make a living doing it, yet you continue to study, practice, and compete because it's what you love to do. Also, there's a sliver of hope that you could make it to the top. Who knows, you might one day win the lottery. One never knows what the future will bring and most novelists are depressed optimists or pessimistic dreamers.

Q. What has been your main reason for switching publishers?

A. I am not a guaranteed earner for publishers and I don't write series so my contracts are usually for a single book. I've published multiple novels with a couple of presses, The Wild Rose Press in the US and Salt Publishing in the UK. When I was writing nonfiction, I published with Random House and Doubleday, Penguin, Macmillan and Prentice Hall, and some smaller independent presses, depending on who my agent could sell to at the time. If I ever found a great editor at a generous press that wanted to publish all my books, I would be happy to work with a single publishing house.

Q. And finally, perhaps most important: What are Mickey’s favorite cocktails for winter, spring, summer, and fall?
A. Winter: There is no winter in Florida, which makes you thirsty all year round. Most of the time, any cocktail works. If it's cold out, a glass of decent whiskey, no ice, can be appealing, but this is as rare as an honest man in South Florida.
Spring: I'll try whatever's new, even hard seltzer (ugh), but usually end up with a glass of good red wine.
Summer: Hot days are made for hard cider. Or rich, dark beer. Or something frothy and light.
Fall: Is it fall? Because it's 85 degrees and the sun is scorching. Bartender!

Q. The hot tub at Pineapple Hill—where I read books written by others while brainstorming ones I’m writing myself—has unique supernatural powers from which I become way smarter and at least slightly more inebriated. What about you? Complete this interview by contributing a hot tub story of your own or from the news.

A. We had a hot tub for a while. But when lightning struck our house, it fried the heater. Perhaps this is just as well.