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My second book, "The Home Place," had been perculating for many years. When I was ~7 years old, my mom received a phone call that her brother and brother-in-law were missing but their car had been found under several feet of water in Lake Lanier in north Georgia. Eventually, the bodies were found, and the deaths were ruled "accidental drowning," although the bodies were outside the car and the windows were too small for men that size to have floated out. Hearing stories from my many aunts and uncles and other relatives, I wrote a fictional account based on real events as told to me by eyewitnesses or people involved in those events. Hoping to preserve the culture and society of the period from ~1930 to 1956, the story stretches from the childhood of children growing up poor on a farm in northeast Georgia to their escape from the harsh life on the farm to jobs in nearby small towns and the appearance of a ruthless criminal, who was eventually arrested by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for selling drug and who the arresting officer told me in a years-later interview about the man: "there's no telling how many dead bodies there are in wells up that way that he is responsible for."

"The Home Place" was selected by the PBS/NPR station in Atlanta for their 2007 Suggested Reading List, which is a very big honor, and gave me validation that I had some skill and encouraged me to continue writing. Of course, I would have anyway, but it's nice to know that what you're putting on paper is getting through to the readers you hope to reach.