What do a preacher, a gravedigger, a fiddler, and an elderly woman all have in common? They're all featured in a book titled A Twilight Reel: Stories by Writer of the Week, Dr. Michael Amos Cody.
Michael Amos Cody is no stranger to publishing. His first book titled Gabriel's Songbook received great praise from various reviewers including author Jeff Man of Country who said, “What a wonderful book! Artistic ambition, first love, small-town Appalachian life, the image-obsessed machinations of the Nashville music industry: all ring so authentic, so true. Michael Amos Cody’s first novel is gripping, poignant, and unforgettable.”
Now his latest work, A Twilight Reel: Stories has reviewers like Linda Parsons, author of Candescent and This Shaky Earth, saying, “Cody is the masterful caller of the reel, leading us into mystery, time, a little magic realism, and possibly redemption—ever mindful of the living and the dead.”
“Although a number of murders and other blood-shedding behaviors have helped—or caused—Madison County to live up to its reputation, the nickname ‘Bloody Madison’ probably began with the infamous Shelton Laurel Massacre that took place in January 1863, an event that has been used in several works of fiction and looms in the background of A Twilight Reel’s “Decoration Day,” Cody shared.
At 62 years old this author said that being traditionally published by a small independent press was best for him: “I decided this was best for me because I didn’t want any of the pressures in the realm of agents/big-house publishing.”
Every writer gets their start somewhere and we often remember that moment when we realize it is a passion that we will pursue at some point in our lives; for Michael Amos Cody that happened when he was in middle school. “My uncle, Rev. Joe Reeves, was a very literate Methodist minister who inspired me from his pulpit. By the time I was in 8th or 9th grade, music took hold of me and led me into songwriting. After some years of writing songs in Nashville, I returned home to western North Carolina and added fiction.”
He told the blog that he has no particular spot where he prefers to write but said, “I generally write in my ETSU office or my home office. But when I have a big project or deadline, I like to write somewhere away—a motel in some scenic area is best.”
We were curious to know what inspired him to write this collection of tales which makes up A Twilight Reel Stories and Michael shared, “As I moved deep into my thirties, I saw the mountains I’d grown up in changing—the landscape itself began to change as people from other places flocked to Asheville and the surrounding areas (including Madison County). The influx of new people and new ways of living and understanding the world often seemed to exist in tension with the more traditional mountain culture long-established by settler-invaders after Cherokee Removal in the 1830s.”
Michael said it took 25 years to put this book together, “believe it or not. I had the idea for A Twilight Reel and wrote early versions of three of the stories in the mid-1990s as my MA/English thesis at Western Carolina University. Then, over the next fifteen years or so, as I was establishing myself in the profession of a college professor, I managed to add another four or five stories. Then, once I’d cleared the last hurdle of promotion to full professor, I really began to focus on fiction and finished the novel Gabriel’s Songbook (2017) and the final stories of A Twilight Reel (2021).”
When we caught up with Michael he was reading a number of pieces and books from “—nineteenth-century American poetry (including Nicholas A. Basbanes’s biography of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Cross of Snow), Joseph Campbell, literary theory. I’m just finishing up Trang Sen: A Novel of Vietnam by Sarah-Ann Smith. I just finished rereading (with students) F*ckface by Leah Hampton. I’m also reading a couple of memoirs: Bearwallow by Jeremy B. Jones and Ghostbread by Sonja Livingston.”
His favorite genre to read, “I prefer fiction—mystery novels, culture-based stories/novels (Appalachian, Native American, Nordic noir).”
As writers, most of us have a favorite writing quote that inspires or sticks with us throughout our writing careers and for Michael Amos Cody his favorite comes from Thomas Mann, “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
When we inquired if he was part of any writing groups and if they had assisted him in his venture to write Michael said, “Yes, I belong to a group in the East Tennessee area. They make me work harder, and, writing with them in mind, I learn to write—at least to some extent—with the mind of a reader.”
On September 29th at 6 p.m. (EST) join us for our exclusive Writing Corner Wednesday interview with author Michael Amos Cody. Follow us on BuyMeCoffee for Season 3 behind-the-scenes extras, promotional assistance, and more. Season 3 of The Writing Wall Blog & Podcast is brought to you by S.E. Smith and The Get My Book Out There Podcast.
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Author Bio
MICHAEL AMOS CODY was born in Sumter, South Carolina, raised in Walnut, North Carolina, and spent the early years of his adult life as a songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee. He earned his B.A. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina, Asheville, in 1993, his M.A. in English from Western Carolina University in 1995, and his Ph.D. in English from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, in 2000. He is the author of Charles Brockden Brown and the Literary Magazine: Cultural Journalism in the Early American Republic (McFarland, 2004) and the novel Gabriel’s Songbook (Pisgah Press, 2017). He has written on the Gothic kinship between Charles Brockden Brown and Nathaniel Hawthorne for The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, on Hawthorne’s “Romantic Predecessors” for Hawthorne in Context (Cambridge UP, 2019), and on “Brown’s Early Biographers and Reception, 1815-1940s” for the Oxford Handbook of Charles Brockden Brown (2019). He is co-editor of The Literary Magazine and Other Writings, 1803-1807, volume three of The Collected Writings of Charles Brockden Brown (Bucknell UP, 2019). His fiction and poems have appeared in Tampa Review, Yemassee, The Chaffin Journal, The Southern Poetry Anthology (Vols. VI and VII), The Howl, Pisgah Review, Short Story, Potpourri, and Fury. His collection of short stories, A Twilight Reel, was in May 2021 by Pisgah Press, an independent publisher based in Asheville, North Carolina. Cody teaches American literature before 1900, Native American literature, and mythology in the Department of Literature & Language at East Tennessee State University.
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