Some deaths don’t come after illness or warning.They arrive in the middle of an ordinary day.In Episode 2 of Shadows & Storylines, I talk about my grandfather’s death: sudden, unexpected, and the result of him trying to help someone else.This is a voice-only episode about the kind of loss that leaves no time to prepare. About how quickly a steady presence can disappear. And about the quiet shock that settles in when someone who lived by responsibility and service is gone in an instant.It’s also about what it means to inherit a way of moving through the world. A quiet awakening of showing up, helping, and doing what needed to be done without expecting recognition.There’s no attempt here to explain or justify what happened.Just memory, reflection, and the understanding that some lives end the same way they were lived.Shadows & Storylines is a behind-the-writing series about people, place, and the unseen moments that shape the stories we carry forward.New episodes every Monday.

Before there were books, there was a place.In this first episode of Shadows & Storylines, I go back to where everything started: Elamville and the Wiregrass of southeast Alabama.This is a voice-only episode about place, memory, and the quiet influences that shape a life and a writer long before the words ever arrive.No visuals. No narration tricks.Just a story about growing up in a small place with long shadows and how that place still lives inside every story I tell.