Category: Book Features

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Monstrous Grief: Gus Moreno’s This Thing Between Us

This Thing Between Us

Some books get into you, worming their way into your psyche. Scenes from their pages bubble up from the depths of your mind at the oddest times. You’re doing the dishes, listening to an album or a podcast, and a snippet of remembered dialogue sends shivers down your spine. When the last page is turned, these books leave a void in their wake.

Gus Moreno’s This Thing Between Us (MCDxFSG Originals) is such a book. Which is fitting, because This Thing Between Us is a book about the void, about the spaces we leave behind when we go, and about the grief that fills them.

The novel, which takes the form of a letter to the protagonist’s dead wife, written as a sort of coping mechanism-meets-exorcism, feels personal, as though Moreno rewrote journal entries and mixed in some supernatural elements. It’s also incredibly timely in its meditations on grief, loneliness, belonging, and the pervasive intrusion of consumer technology, arriving as it does at the tail-end of the 19th month of a global pandemic, with all its death and enforced distance and disturbingly chipper advertisements. 

In This Thing Between Us, Thiago mourns his deceased wife Vera and attempts to navigate the uncertain waters of social life after loss. At the funeral, Vera’s old boss throws himself into Thiago’s arms, sobbing. Some of Thiago’s and Vera’s friends want him to move on, but he’s stuck, a ghost of his former self, walking through his routines but finding no comfort there. Bit by bit, at first hardly noticeable through the fog of his grief, things begin to get more and more bizarre around Thiago. It all began when Vera talked him into getting an advanced at-home smart speaker, Itza.

Gus Moreno, author of This Thing Between Us (Credit: Gus Moreno)

“The things that were happening in our condo, as long as we never drew them to a single source and gave it a name, it couldn’t take shape. But with every strange noise, every random package, it had felt like we were being pushed toward calling it what it was, calling it into existence, and when we did the world would laugh at us,” Moreno writes. “We pretended it didn’t exist and you ended up dead. Every unexplained memory was crashing down on me, collapsing into a single source. The condo, the dreams, Itza, the cyanide bomb, the wall, it was all the same thing. Ghost didn’t feel like a big enough word.”

Moreno writes about feelings and experiences for which words can never be big enough. And he does it, not only with skill and grace, but with a grasp of genre capable of igniting a page-turning frenzy in the reader.

The key to making a thriller or horror story is making it convincing. Why do the would-be victims stay? Why does no one speak up sooner? Usually, the answer is some version of “they’re afraid to admit they’re in danger,” and Moreno plays with a version of this idea. Thiago, who saw himself as the supporting character, the lesser in an unequal partnership, isn’t sure he cares if he is in danger. Maybe he deserves whatever happens. At times, he believes that he’s cursed, so it’s easy for him to ignore the warnings — the strange, sometimes threatening packages of things they didn’t order, the voices, the cold spots in the apartment, the suspiciously sudden appearance of a friendly stray dog.

Tasteful nods to other classics in the genre abound, such as a scene from The Exorcist Thiago glimpses while flipping channels, which later stands as a sort of protective amulet, hinting at the way the seemingly trite flotsam and jetsam of pop culture can be sources of strength in times of deep sadness. Along with Moreno’s atmospheric approach, much of the heavy lifting is taken care of, leaving the reader’s imagination wide margins to conjure its own fears to fill the space.

One can’t help but hope that, when faced with the unfathomable, Thiago will summon the strength to save himself. In the end, Moreno’s This Thing Between Us does what only the best horror can — gives the reader reason to hold onto their humanity.

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Memoir Masterwork: Nichole Perkins’ Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be

Nichole Perkins (Photo: Sylvie Rosokoff)

Nashville-born, Brooklyn-based author Nichole Perkins contains multitudes. She is also a poet, an essayist, and a podcast host. And, of course, she’s a person, someone who cannot be defined by a career. This weekend, Perkins will discuss her multifaceted writing and life as a panelist in the Southern Festival of Books, which is being presented virtually this year, giving Memphians an easy option for viewing the usually Nashville-based literature festival.

Virtual events have become a regular aspect of Perkins’ life this year, as she has worked to promote her recently released memoir, Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be (Grand Central Publishing).

“I wrote the bulk of it during the pandemic last year,” Perkins says, explaining that it was a strange experience to delve deep into her memory while feeling so disconnected from anything resembling a normal routine. She did experience a “weird sense of timelessness” as many people did during the pandemic, adding a wrinkle to the already difficult task of writing a memoir.

“That’s one of the reasons I wanted to anchor the book in pop culture,” Perkins says of Sometimes I Trip, which uses seemingly disparate pop culture icons as touchstones. “I’m not super great at dates,” she admits, “but I can remember what I was listening to, what I was watching, what were the TV shows we were talking about in class.” So by using Kermit the Frog, Prince, or Frasier’s Niles Crane (played by David Hyde Pierce), Perkins is able to anchor her memories. But her detective work doesn’t end with the pop culture references elegantly infused in her essays.

She wrote a chapter called “The Women” about her great-grandmother, her aunt, and her sister. To help inspire herself, Perkins went to dollar stores and bought soap like the soap her great-grandmother used to have. She would smell the soap to help encourage the memories to come. “I was living in New York while I wrote the book, so a lot of the Southern smells from my childhood are not here,” Perkins says.

Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be is at times heartwarming and heartbreaking, honest and humane, humorous and haunting. It’s the chronicle of Perkins’ growth into herself as a person, as a Black Southern woman, as someone who fully inhabits her body, and as someone who has had to learn by trial and error what all of that means. It’s a story, told in essays and with references to Prince songs, of someone coming into her own “like a storm gaining strength just off the coast,” as Memphis-born writer Saeed Jones says on the back of the book.

“Serena is so many things,” Perkins writes in “Softness,” noting the acclaimed athlete Serena Williams also owns a clothing line, makes jewelry, and went to school to learn how to do nails, “but her focused athleticism intimidates many, so they resort to the laziest insult. Her treatment reminds me that for people who believe gender exists as a binary, there are only absolutes. You are either masculine or you’re feminine, and there’s no room for nuance.”

In Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be, Perkins has made room for nuance, for her own multitudes. The book is an excellent work of memoir, and it should not be missed.

Nichole Perkins is a panelist for the Southern Festival of Books’ “In Conversation: Brian Broome, Anjali Enjeti, and Nichole Perkins” event on October 9th, 4:15 p.m. To find out more or attend the festival’s virtual events, go to sofestofbooks.org.

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Piece of My Heart: Stephen Graham Jones’ New Novel

(Courtesy Stephen Graham Jones)

Years ago, some friends of mine made a full-length horror movie. A slasher. They bought a van, drove it up to Connecticut, where they filmed for a few weeks. They did pretty much everything themselves, so they could pay for the things they couldn’t do themselves. They hired a pro cinematographer and a handful of real actors — Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman, Peter Tork from The Monkees. All this to say, this was no backyard B-movie red corn syrup amateur-hour horror flick. My friends were members of the congregation of the Church of Horror, and they made a pilgrimage to Connecticut to make an offering in all seriousness.

I know people who live and breathe — whose blood pumps — for slashers. In a world that seems, at times, arbitrary and chaotic, they can rely on the unspoken rules of slashers. Those folks exist in the real world, not just in the celluloid frames of Scream (Wes Craven, 1996), or the pages of books like Stephen Graham Jones’ My Heart is a Chainsaw (Saga Press).

The heroine of My Heart is a Chainsaw, 17-year-old Jennifer Daniels, aka Jade, of Proofrock, Idaho, is one such slasher savant.

“I write because I can’t draw. I write because I can’t cut to the basket slick enough to go pro. I write because I eat too many Sixlets and drink too much tea and my fingers get all jittery, and I have to put them somewhere,” writes Jones on his website, demontheory.net. “I write because, for a few pages at a time, I can make the world make sense.”

For Jade, slashers are a way of making the world make sense. There are rules to slasher films, after all, a precedent that must be followed. They’re a coping mechanism helping her get through life as a high school outcast with a hard home life, but, as with any coping mechanism, they also help her keep the world at arm’s length.

Jade is poor, and her parents are divorced. She does some janitorial work, which helps her pay for food and bargain bin VHS tapes of ’80s horror flicks, but which hardly endears her to her classmates. Jade’s father is Native American, and her mother is white, leaving her with a feeling of not fully belonging to either community. It doesn’t help that her mother has treated Jade like a stranger since the divorce. So Jade is left to fend for herself, as she lives with her neglectful, alcoholic father. That might not seem to be enough to doom a teenager, no matter how much they quote Halloween, to status as a pariah, not in the 21st century anyway. But as anyone who has lived in a truly small town can attest, Jade is doomed at least thrice-over.

A scholar of slasher movies, Jade sees herself as a Cassandra when strange disappearances begin to plague Proofrock and no one believes her hypothesis. She has cracked the code, and stands ready to usher Letha, who Jade sees as the story’s Final Girl, to triumph over the masked killer, whoever it is.
As the pages turn, My Heart is a Chainsaw reveals other horrors — neglect and abuse, gentrification, racism, and loneliness. The book culminates in Proofrock’s annual Fourth of July celebration, when the townies row or motor their boats out on the lake to drink and watch a screening of Jaws. The big celebration waiting at the end of the book works like a ticking clock — the reader just knows that something horrible is going to happen to spoil the party. After all, it’s a slasher. There are rules.

Jones’ other most recent publications, The Only Good Indians and Night of the Mannequins, won a pair of Shirley Jackson Awards, and TOGI racked up several other awards besides, so it’s no surprise that My Heart is a Chainsaw is already receiving early buzz. The author’s prose is lyrical, and his tone sometimes shades into reverence and remorse — reverence for the genre whose influence can be found in so much of his work, and remorse for the high school outcast those genre rules say he must put through the wringer. 

Certified slasher scholar Stephen Graham Jones (Courtesy Stephen Graham Jones)
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The Great Boykin: Ed Tarkington’s The Fortunate Ones

The Fortunate Ones courtesy Algonquin Books

From a distance, it’s easy to preach the horrors of wealth and the evil that is begotten when money is on the line. Indeed, avarice is marked as one of the greatest undesirable traits throughout history and literature. So why, then, do people keep going back to the finance well and embracing all the poison it has to offer? That’s the question that Ed Tarkington dives into in his sophomore novel, The Fortunate Ones (Algonquin, $26.95 hardcover, with the paperback due in October), for when a higher level of position, status, or society beckons, it’s all too easy to be swept along for the ride.

Ed Tarkington (Credit: Glen Rose)

Billed as a more modernized version of The Great Gatsby, The Fortunate Ones follows a young Charlie Boykin as he and his mother move from the working-class projects of East Nashville into the glitz and glamour of the prestigious Yeatman School, which services the city’s wealthy elite. Charlie’s transition is eased from his assignment to a “big brother,” the seductive Arch Creigh. There’s also Jim Haltom — a new-money father figure that harkens back to Gatsby’s East vs. West Egg dynamics — his wife Cici, and their kids Vanessa and Jamie, who all round out Charlie’s ascent to the elite as he enmeshes himself within his new, privileged environment.

The Fortunate Ones (Courtesy Algonquin Books)

But rags to riches stories are never that simple. Misery and pressure abound among Nashville’s upper crust, with Charlie constantly fighting disillusionment, before the truth behind his relocation sparks a quick exit to Nashville. But his true battle always lies with Arch, the brother figure, friend, and perhaps something more, from whose orbit Charlie can never quite escape. The ensuing ride is a harrowing emotional journey for our narrator. When Arch beckons, he can’t resist. How much of himself is he willing to give away to keep the wealth and status that come from his new friends. Sometimes it’s easy to look away, but the abuse of power always comes with consequences.

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Jay Myers’ Rounding Third

Jay Myers lives, learns, and teaches by example. And he loves to tell about all that knowledge he’s accumulated running his own successful business.

He’s just published his third book on his adventures as a company man, first for other firms and then running his own show, a production that became so successful that he sold his business (even though he resisted, a little).

The book, being launched this week, is Rounding Third and Heading for Home: The Emotional Journey of Selling My Business and the Lessons Learned Along the Way, and the grist for his tales are the obstacles that came at him like wild pitches — yes, he loves his baseball metaphors — and how he managed to use skill and a bit of luck to turn them into hits.

Myers founded Interactive Solutions Inc. (ISI) in 1996, an “audio-visual integration firm” that developed expertise in the swiftly evolving field of videoconferencing.

He recounts that in nine months, beginning with the day he got fired from his job, he put together his business starting with no money, secured/lost financing on the way, got a melanoma diagnosis, and endured a supplier embezzlement.

It did get better. He got ISI into distance learning and telemedicine and grew the company. Still obstacles found their way. In 2003, the accounting manager embezzled $257,000 and nearly killed the business. Then the Great Recession came along and messed up everybody’s plans.

Yet Myers — now a member of the Society of Entrepreneurs — was not going to suddenly turn risk averse. When the recession hit, he doubled down and doubled sales, coming out stronger than ever. He was deft at pivoting and reinventing.

And he wasn’t planning to sell the business. There were plenty of inquiries, but when one of the top companies in the field came courting, he had to listen, and he liked what he heard.

The process was both profound and instructive for him. “Selling the business is way more than a financial transaction,” Myers says. “It is a life-changing event.” After going through it, he decided he had another book in him. “I thought, ‘How did we get here? Why us?’ And that’s when I started reflecting on the lessons learned.”

The book is as much an encouragement from a mentor (he loves doing that) as it is a how-to when it comes to selling a company. The people he wants to reach are “working so hard every day to build their business and grow it. I want them to understand how you build value in that business.”

And that could be to eventually sell it, or maybe to hand it over to the next generation or the employees.

Rounding Third is an easy read, told in Myers’ engaging voice and chock-full of insights that have value whether you want to sell a business or just run a business well or even if you aren’t in business. Life presents obstacles no matter where you are and these are adaptable tips.

“I think one of the advantages I had in writing this is that I went into a fairly good amount of detail,” he says. “I got educated about this process because I had to understand what the endgame was.”

His first book, from 2007, was Keep Swinging: An Entrepreneur’s Story of Overcoming Adversity and Achieving Small Business Success. In 2014, he published Hitting the Curveballs: How Crisis Can Strengthen and Grow Your Business.

“I feel like I’ve stepped up my game considerably with this book because it’s so instructive. The other ones were storytelling and fun and inspirational, but this one, you can take notes and a small business owner can be helped with some options.”

Meanwhile, Myers is plenty busy now that he’s not in the CEO’s chair. He’s continuing to write for an industry magazine, he’s a volunteer mentor with the Service Corps of Retired Executives, and he also mentors through the Fogelman College of Business & Economics at the University of Memphis where he’s the executive in residence.

And he’s started a podcast interviewing business executives, including local luminaries such as Duncan Williams, Dr. Scott Morris, and Carolyn Chism Hardy. The podcast is titled Extra Innings, but the content is all business. Again, the die-hard New York Yankee fan loves his baseball metaphors.

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Two Works of Nonfiction Examine the Cultural Reach of Mississippi

A photo from "A Place Like Mississippi" by W. Ralph Eubanks

For today’s Flyer book column, we turn our gaze to our neighbor to the south — Mississippi. And why, in the Memphis Flyer, am I choosing to write about Mississippi? The answer lies in the many shared connections. 

Canadian music writer Rob Bowman made his name writing about Stax Records, both for his Soulsville, U.S.A. and writing the liner notes to many Stax collections. And in his newest offering, The Last Soul Company: The Malaco Records Story, Bowman writes that many Stax survivors made their way to the Jackson, Mississippi-based Malaco Records after Stax went out of business. 

And Mississippi wordsmith W. Ralph Eubanks, in his recently released (and absolutely gorgeous) A Place Like Mississippi (Timber Press), devotes no little amount of ink to the connection between Memphis and Mississippi. “If you came from rural Mississippi, that’s the urban space you knew,” Eubanks told me on a call, “Memphis.”

Rob Bowman’s The Last Soul Company: The Malaco Records Story (Malaco Records)

Somehow, mere seconds into our phone call, Bowman confesses his love of Memphis barbecue, and Payne’s Bar-B-Que in particular. “I drove there for lunch at least three times a week. I even booked my flights around Payne’s,” he says. “I’ve driven all over the South. There’s lots of great stuff out there, but nothing touches Payne’s.” Espousing a view about a particular barbecue restaurant is a sure sign that the author has spent time in the Bluff City. And he has. Bowman lived in Memphis for three-and-a-half years while pursuing his Ph.D. at then Memphis State. 

But soon enough our conversation turns from Memphis ’cue and Memphis soul to Malaco Records in Mississippi. “They’re one of the longest-running, independent labels in American music history. Longer than Atlantic, longer than Chess, longer, of course, than Stax or Motown,” Bowman says. “The only label I think that’s had a longer history is Delmar up in Chicago.” 

Rob Bowman, courtesy of the author

The story of Malaco Records is endlessly intriguing, largely because the label has grown its reach and influence in a series of risky — but ultimately successful — gambles. In the age of disco and funk, they scooped up a slew of middle-aged soul singers who had aged out of their former heartthrob status. Later, they conquered the gospel quartet world, and then leveraged that success to make inroads into the world of mass choirs. By being early adopters of the potential lucrative work of digitizing their archives, Malaco found themselves at the leading edge of the sampling and streaming revolutions. Of course, that’s an overview spanning decades, and it barely scratches the surface. Bowman tells the story much more eloquently in The Last Soul Company. Yes, for the full story, one really must buy the book. 

But it’s a book worth adding to any music lover’s collection — especially a music aficionado who has a penchant for Southern soul, blues, and gospel, as Malaco has worked in all those interconnected genres. What’s more, the book is lovely. Bowman had access to a smorgasbord of archival photos, and they are put to good use in the oversized volume.

W. Ralph Eubanks’ A Place Like Mississippi (Timber Press)

“I like to joke that I’ve worked both sides of the desk, being the writer and the editor,” says Eubanks, author of A Place Like Mississippi. That career path left Eubanks well suited to write about other writers, which he does with aplomb in his new book. A Place Like Mississippi examines the reach of the Magnolia State through the lens of its landscape, legacy, and literature. From William Faulkner to Jesmyn Ward, Eubanks guides readers on a tour of Mississippi’s literature, and the result is both enlightening and entertaining. 

Of course, one need not be a diehard Mississippi literature lover to get something out of Eubanks’ new book. He hopes people will see the connections between their place and this specific place, and he writes that examples of much of America’s history, both triumphs and its great sins, can be found within the borders of his home state. “Those who like to think that these sins only took place within the borders of Mississippi are deceiving themselves,” Eubanks says. 

W. Ralph Eubanks by Ed Croom

And speaking of parallels of place, there is much of Memphis in A Place Like Mississippi. “It was a Southern space where there were still racial restrictions, but you felt that you could breathe because you had a space like Beale Street [where] a Black person could feel like a respected human being. Then of course white people who came to Memphis had The Peabody.” In Memphis, Eubanks says, Mississippians could travel to experience a sense of Southern grandeur. Memphis, Eubanks says, is a transitional space between the Deep South, the Mid-South, and what the author calls the “Up South” — St. Louis and the like. (Readers who scoff at the idea of St. Louis being any kind of South would do well to remember how many Memphians relocated there to escape the ravages of the yellow fever epidemic.) “It’s when Richard Wright arrives in Memphis that the narrative in Black Boy begins to shift. You can see that he begins to feel some freedom,” Eubanks says, giving an example of Memphis’ status as something of a gateway in literature. And that’s without even touching on the music of the Delta, in which the Bluff City looms large indeed. 

Another parallel between the two books mentioned here is the excellent use of photography to complement the prose. A Place Like Mississippi is broken into sections by the state’s geographic regions, and the photos included in the book do much to illustrate the differences between each region. The author includes several of his own photos as well, though he is somewhat modest about that fact. “I do not think of myself as a photographer. I want to be very clear about that,” Eubanks says, laughing. Of course, inquisitive readers might be best served by reading the book and judging for themselves.

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Liv Albert’s Greek Mythology Adds a New Spin to Old Tales

Excerpted from Greek Mythology: The Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes Handbook by Liv Albert. Illustrations by Sara Richard. Copyright © 2021 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. Used with permission of the publisher, Adams Media, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved.

Some stories have staying power. Like old blues standards that get covered and reworked and rerecorded and covered again, these stories find their way into the DNA of even the most cutting-edge of popular culture. That is especially true of the mythology of Ancient Greece, which got a facelift with Liv Albert’s new collection, Greek Mythology: The Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes Handbook (Simon & Schuster).

Albert’s feminist retelling of Greek mythology exists on a spectrum somewhere between Stephen Fry’s relatively no-frills Mythos and Heroes books, and the raucous, word-drunk manifesto that is Nina MacLaughlin’s Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung. Albert’s tone is fairly straightforward — the word “handbook” in the subtitle is a clue to the “Who’s Who” nature of the book. It’s a primer on the Olympians, heroes, titans, and other movers and shakers in the world of Greek myths. But the author works to address the misogyny that is often baked into these tales (remember — in one version of the story, Pandora, the first woman, is created by Zeus as a punishment for men who had angered him).

“Adonis caught the eye of Aphrodite the moment he was born (we won’t dig too deep into just how troubling that is).”

“Most of the moons of Jupiter have been named after ‘lovers’ of Zeus (again, he was really more of an assaulter),” Albert writes. “Interestingly, the NASA spacecraft Juno orbits Jupiter. Basically, this means NASA sent Zeus’s wife to watch over him and the women he had affairs with.” From reminders about the more problematic elements of these stories (and there are plenty) to references to popular culture, astronomy, and the later Roman myths inspired by tales of the Olympians, Albert is careful to both entertain and enlighten. She traces these stories’ paths through history, delivering enough wry jokes to keep the pages turning. And she’s careful to set the record straight where it needs it. One example? Heracles, of the 12 Labors of Heracles fame, is spelled according to the traditional Greek pronunciation, and he sports his classic lion-skin cape and giant club.

Excerpted from Greek Mythology: The Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes Handbook by Liv Albert. Illustrations by Sara Richard. Copyright © 2021 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. Used with permission of the publisher, Adams Media, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved.

The book’s illustrations, masterfully rendered by Sara Richard, are worth the price of admission alone. Drawn by Richard, the minotaur is hulking, monstrous, a Greek shield impaled on his horn. The witch Circe is elegant as she holds a chalice of steaming potion; she is depicted surrounded by boars with eerily human hands, a reference to Odysseus’ crew and their transformation at Circe’s hands.

In all, the book is a delightfully updated version of many of the most famous Greek myths. It’s a primer for anyone interested in the roots of many modern stories.

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Satanic Panic Redux: Clay McLeod Chapman’s Whisper Down the Lane

Lil Nas X, the rapper who rocked boats by blending hip-hop and country music in “Old Town Road,” seems to have ushered in a renaissance of the Satanic Panic with the angels-and-demons iconography in the music video for the recently released “Montero (Call Me by Your Name).” If, like me, you have evangelical aunts and uncles with access to the internet, you know that the video is a sure sign that Satan is real and he’s out to get the children.

Well, if we have to do the Satanic Panic again, at least we have books to go with it. Clay McLeod Chapman’s Whisper Down the Lane (Quirk Books), released this Tuesday, could hardly be more timely. What’s more, Chapman will discuss the novel online tonight (Thursday, April 8th) via webinar as part of Novel bookstore’s Reader Meet Writer series of events. 

The book alternates between chapters set in 1983 and in 2013, following young Sean and the fully grown Richard. But Sean and Richard are the same person, 30 years and a scandal apart and after a name change to give young Sean/Richard some chance at a semblance at a normal life. But it seems, as Satanic imagery begins to pop up at the elementary school where Richard teaches, that his past has come back to haunt him. 

There are shades of The Crucible in Whisper Down the Lane, making it an excellent companion novel to Sarah Langan’s Good Neighbors, published earlier this year. The novel centers around the ease with which the seed of a lie can take root and grow and thrive. The most true-to-life moments are young Sean’s interactions with his single mother, and how her unmarried status makes her a pariah. Her stress, her absolute need to never make a mistake because the eyes of the community are always on her, and the panic that fosters in Sean, felt true and tragic. 

Chapman crafts a horrific tragedy, built on misunderstandings and the best intentions. The novel is all the more compelling for its lack of an obvious villain. Of course, there’s no reason to take my word for it. 
Clay McLeod Chapman discusses Whisper Down the Lane online via Novel bookstore’s Reader Meet Writer series, Thursday, April 8th, at 6 p.m. The event is free with registration.

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Brown Money: Warn Wilson Jr.’s Inspirational Book

Warn Wilson Jr.

Warn Wilson Jr. is an electrical engineer — but not just an electrical engineer. The Jackson, Mississippi, native is also an author and illustrator of two picture books, Brown Money and Royal Counsel. Wilson is a graduate of Mississippi State University, where he obtained a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering.

Wilson is also an entrepreneur, with two card games, Nah Bruh and the Brown Money companion card game, to his name. The engineer/entrepreneur/author put all his skills to work making Brown Money, an inspirational picture book that aims to teach children about responsibility, possibilities, and the many avenues one can take on the journey to independence and self-sufficiency. I spoke with Wilson about his book and why he wrote it.

Memphis Flyer: Have you always wanted to write?

Warn Wilson Jr.: So It’s ironic that as a kid I actually didn’t enjoy writing. It used to seem boring and tedious. My English teachers said I wrote great papers, but in my mind it just didn’t seem fun. But as time went on I began to enjoy writing because it became a great way to express inner thoughts and feelings. I also now enjoy being able to transfer my knowledge and experience to others through books. Even in my current line of work I do a lot of technical writing which requires me to break complex information down into an easy to understand format. In turn, my approach to teaching things in the simplest way possible helps others to learn faster. When I see others understand better due to my easy-to-understand format, it is a really rewarding feeling. Almost makes me feel like I should have been a teacher [laughs].

Tell me a little bit about doing the illustrations. 

I actually painted each individual image on canvas — book covers included — after I wrote the dialogue of the book. I painted each image so that it would perfectly reflect the message being taught on each corresponding page. The paintings took me approximately two weeks to complete. Painting is another passion of mine that I enjoy in my free time.

Warn Wilson Jr.

Did your career in engineering influence your decision to write Brown Money?

Yes, my career in engineering played the main role in me creating Brown Money. I also wanted to share investing and entrepreneurial knowledge that I have picked up. But I am a fond believer in STEM being a super important field, especially given the direction that tech and science are headed in the future. I also believe heavily in having more than one stream of income, which is why I advocate for investing in stocks, real estate, etc.

What made you want to write Brown Money?

What made me want to write Brown Money was the lack of certain information or inspiration I had as a youth. I wanted to create a book that introduces you to a lot of the things that I didn’t learn as a youth as far as investing and having multiple streams of income. I also wanted to make STEM look cool and hopefully inspire kids to head toward that direction.

Can you talk a little bit about the importance of having a “Plan B”?

I find the importance of having a Plan B super important. Just as I teach in the book, you must always be ready just in case your Plan A falls through or doesn’t work. Having a Plan B will help you to keep moving forward in the case of something going wrong. It is also great for kids to learn the importance of a Plan B prior to getting to the adult stage. Because we as adults know that having a backup plan could save you greatly, so I want to relay that same knowledge to kids before they get to an older age.

I like the balance the father strikes between encouragement and practical advice. My parents had no business savvy — they had four evictions between them before I was a teenager — so the encouragement to dream big, with the advice of working to improve your prospects, is something I know can be valuable for young readers who might not get that encouragement or advice elsewhere. Were you thinking about that when you wrote the book?

Yes, I was thinking of exactly that! I want kids to have the mindset that they can accomplish whatever they want as long as they are willing to work hard. Which is something that I truly believe. And hopefully my book can provide that inspiration and encouragement that the next young person may need to keep striving and trying.

Just knowing they have options may help a kid have patience in finding their ultimate passion.”

I have to say again that I’m really impressed with the frank, honest discussion in the book. The father admits he’s tired of work sometimes, but it’s vital to take care of responsibilities. Was it important to you to treat children with respect and honesty?

Yes, I believe that treating children with respect and honesty are super important! Even though they are young, they deserve respect. And I believe that if they are shown good examples of respect then they will know how to give respect back as they mature. I also believe in providing children with truth and transparency no matter how it affects their feelings. I believe that providing them truth will help that child to really build strong trust with their parents as they get older. My parents always treated me this way, which is why I advocate for providing children with respect and transparency. Being raised that way truly helped me a lot in life, especially when dealing with others. And I also have seen great results from using this approach with my younger siblings and nephew.

A wide range of potential careers is on display. How did you decide what careers to include?

So in the book, I did mention a wide range of careers [laughs]. But that’s the thing — I wanted to give examples of many options being available to you, so that you never feel restricted. I want kids to know that success does not have one path and that you can take routes to get to a meaningful life. So even though I love the idea of college, I want to show that there is also success in taking up trades or investing as a way to make a living. Regardless, I just want kids to keep an open mind and be willing to work hard for whatever life they want to have. Just knowing they have options may help a kid have patience in finding their ultimate passion.

Brown Money by Warn Wilson Jr.

You have another book, too, right? Can you tell me a little bit about Royal Counsel?

Yes, I have a second book named Royal Counsel. I wrote it shortly after my debut book Brown Money. With Royal Counsel, I also painted all of its illustrations on canvas. Royal Counsel was written as a tribute to my mother and grandmothers. It is filled with inspirational sayings and positive messages that they provided me with growing up. I wanted every reader to feel uplifted after reading it.

Is there anything else you’d like to add? 

I am planning to release my next book Brown Money 2 this summer. It is a continuation of the story of the first one but will elaborate more upon the dad’s life as an engineer. Moving forward, I plan to keep writing books, creating games, providing electronic products for the public, and inspiring the youth. I also cut hair [laughs]. I have been my own barber since the 9th grade — which is why put pristine haircuts on the character illustrations in Brown Money [laughs]. As you can see, I truly believe that we can do whatever we set our mind to and I plan to keep showing just that in my daily life. Thanks again for this opportunity and taking time out to learn about my life.

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Corey Mesler’s Camel Literary Universe

CREDIT: Courtesy Corey Mesler

“Welcome to the new America. How can I help you?” asks Corey Mesler when I call him to talk about his newest novel, The Adventures of Camel Jeremy Eros. The poet, author, and owner, with his wife, Cheryl, of Burke’s Book Store, is nothing if not prolific — it seems as though we were just speaking about Camel’s Bastard Son. Clearing up the Camel timeline — which ended up being more complex than this book reviewer originally realized — was just one of the things we discussed. As always, Mesler is charming and poetic — but that’s what I’ve come to expect.

Courtesy Corey Mesler

Corey Mesler

Memphis Flyer: Did you write this recently? It feels like Camel’s Bastard Son just came out.

Corey Mesler: In the small press world, what happens is there are different lag times between acceptance and publication. Some presses move really slowly, some presses move fast. This book I’d written long before Camel’s Bastard Son. This was supposed to come out before that in my perfect plan.

Are they related? Is it the same Camel?

Yes, it is, but Camel doesn’t actually appear in Camel’s Bastard Son as a corporeal being. It’s funny, at Christmas, a customer who — for some reason — is enamoured of my books gave as Christmas presents what he called “the Camel quartet.” I couldn’t be more flattered.

It makes me think of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripliad.

Yeah, or John Updike’s Rabbit books.

What are the other books in the quartet?

Camel first appears in We are Billion Year–Old Carbon, which is my Memphis hippie novel. I liked him so much, I put him in Memphis Movie, which takes place at a much later time. So I made him an old man who is a retired poet living in Midtown Memphis who gardens and doesn’t really write anymore.

When we talked about Camel’s Bastard Son, we spoke about contemporary politics and discourse. Are there similar influences here, or is this book focused on Camel?

It takes place more in the ’60s and ’70s. I was 14 years old in 1969, and I wanted so bad to be a hippie. I wanted to be at Woodstock, but I was 14. As a writer, I thought, I can go back and revisit that through Camel. That’s what this book is. It has some of the youthful joy, I hope, of being a young poet, going to San Francisco, that sort of thing.

You didn’t get to go, but did it feel good to send Camel?

Well, the chapter about Woodstock, you have to read it. Camel’s too stoned to get there.

Do you have plans to do a booksigning at Burke’s at some point — kind of a “make up” signing?

This book, I feel, was sort of lost in the pandemic. I hate to even say this — I have a novel coming out in March, and then I have an 800-page novel coming out in the summer, from two different presses.

Wait, what? When do you write these?

I know. It’s absurd. I don’t even think of myself as any more prolific or energetic. I’m not; I’m kind of a lazy writer.

Will these books feature science-fiction elements, like Camel’s Bastard Son?
Yeah, it’s in most of my books. A flattering way to describe it is magical realism, but I think of it more like I watched too much Twilight Zone as a kid.