The Mountain Trilogy
99 Years in The Great Smokies
It began maybe twenty-five years ago. My son and I were sitting on the sofa in the den watching TV and talking. Well . . . he was talking. He was a very talkative kid. In fact when he was little he’d talk as he fell asleep and wake up the next morning talking.
Ba-Da-Boom . . . and I will be here until The End Times…
For some odd reason the thought drifted into my head that someday I’d really like to have a book I’d written sitting on a shelf in the bookcase behind the sofa. I clearly remember pointing to the spot. Second shelf from the top . . . dead center. To the best of my self-knowledge, I’d never had a desire to write a book. I’d written a ton of songs over the years but song writing is different from writing a book. Writing a song is a creative art built for an Adult ADD Zen Freak. Those people should never write anything longer than two pages – tops. When a song writer writes a book it is advised he trade all that Adult ADD stuff for an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Writing a book takes a lot of time. And thought. And attention.
I was also doing some family research at the time aimed at tracing my wife’s family back through the generations. While filling in those blanks I came across her maternal great-great-great grandfather – one Jacob Fonslow Hall – who was born in western North Carolina in 1838, fought in the Civil War, came home and eventually settled on Hazel Creek in the wilds of The Great Smoky Mountains.
Long Story Short . . . Jacob Fonslow Hall decided to live in my head.
So I wrote his story. On a Tandy 1000 Computer. Yes, that does bear repeating. A Tandy 1000 Computer. And when I was done , I read it and it sucked. So I wrote it again. And again. And again. Until it didn’t suck. Somewhere along the way I bought a Gateway Computer and while the voice in my head kept talking, I kept writing, and eventually I had a book. Or what I thought was a book. I was feelin’ pretty good. Because I was an author now. And like any fledgling author I was faced with The Question:
WTF do I do now..?
Sometime after the self-congratulations were a distant memory I got a letter from my wife’s sister with a story from the Knoxville Sentinel about a company in Greeneville, Tennessee that worked with Fledgling Authors to get their work published. So I gave them a call . . . and of course, they wanted to work with me. So I sent my book – Hazel Creek – to The Editorial Department,which started my working relationship with a wonderful editor - Renni Browne. Renni actually taught me how to write. My job was to find my ‘voice’.
After a few months of editing, revising, re-writing Hazel Creek, and having my ego destroyed by my editor, I sent her two chapters of a ‘next book’ that I wanted to write as a follow-up to Hazel Creek. I called it ‘Line Camp #9’ and it was to be a murder mystery. Renni’s response was brief and to the point: shelve Hazel Creek. Write the new story. So I did. And in 2002 ‘Line Camp #9’ – now titled ‘Monteith’s Mountains’ – was published in hard cover by High Country Publishing, then a regional imprint in Boone, North Carolina.
Long story shorter. . . not only was I now an author, I was a published author.
And to make matters better, I sold some books! Did some signings! Spoke at a few Literary Conferences! Did some readings at Book Stores and Book Clubs! Got great reviews in Literary Magazines and Newspapers! And then . . . the real world of work, bill paying, kid raising, health and family brought me back to earth. My fledgling writing career ground to a halt.
Fast forward to 2017 . . . I retired from working, It’s wonderful, by the way. The kids were grown and gone to Atlanta and Ft. Worth, building their own lives. I remember the first day of retirement when I sat on the floor and asked The Question again:
WTF do I do now?
. . . and a little voice in my head said, “ Don’t you think you should finish my story? After all, I’ve been living up here for 15 years. I’d really like to move on.”
“All right, Fonslow,” said I, “but I’m changing the rules. I got the book I wrote on the bookshelf now. When folks come to visit, and a lull in the conversation happens, I can always point to the bookshelf and do my ‘I wrote that’ routine, so now I’m gonna’ just write for the love of it.’ To which the voice in my head said, “Quit talkin’ and write.”
I published Hazel Creek in 2019 and have just fifteen minutes ago published my third book - Áedáns Cove.
I’ve been writing songs since the late 1960’s. All kinds of songs, all kinds of styles, happy, sad, funny, country songs, jazz tunes, the blues, all kinds. I like to think I still have one more album in me and hope to get to it before my hands give out and before my voice has settled into ‘The Croaking Years’. But even after age has diminished my playing skills, I still have the ability to write stories, and haiku, and sonnets, and rhymes, and nasty comments on Facebook. It’s a gift, I tells ya’.
Jacob Fonslow Hall doesn’t live in my head anymore. He’s gone back to that little gravesite in the Bone Valley cemetery above Hazel Creek. And now that The Mountain Trilogy is done I can finally leave The Great Smokies, too.
. . . so I can write the next one – Beck’s Island – already in progress.