G. M. Frazier
I have been writing fiction for the last twenty years and I am not a genre writer. My stories run the gamut from the supernatural to the sublimely real. The novelist who most impressed upon me the necessity of well crafted dialogue is Hemingway. The novelist who most impressed upon me the power of well crafted narrative is Pat Conroy.
From 1998 to 2000 I was Managing Editor at Genesis Press, which is one of the largest independent book publishers in the South. Among the many books I have edited are the autobiography of Olympian Bob Beamon, Let us Prey, Hunter Lundy’s book Let Us Prey on the fall of televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, and Louisa Dixon’s legal suspense novels, Next to Last Chance and Outside Chance. It was my distinct pleasure to work with Dar Tomlinson as the editor for her debut mainstream novel Broken, which had won the coveted Hemingway First Novel Award in 1994. I also edited Mary Beth Craft's delightful ghost story, Goldengrove, which was her debut novel. I have also edited several children’s books including Boss of Me: The Keyshawn Johnson Story, Diana Nyad’s biography for children about NFL star Keyshawn Johnson, and Libby Hughes’s biography for children about Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods: A Biography for Kids.
“After dinner, Mary Alice and I went for a walk. We didn’t talk, we just held hands. I found it curious that so much of this, our last full day together, had been spent just being together. (...) [P]robably no more than two dozen words had been exchanged between us. I could sense that for the first time, the heartsoreness that had plagued me at times over the past several weeks whenever I contemplated this moment was now visiting Mary Alice. As such, we were both adrift in a sea of sadness where words seemed vapid and superfluous. A plaintive expression, a momentary gesture, a fleeting touch: these were all enough to convey thousands of words of emotion that crowded our hearts and rendered our eyes heavy with tears.”
“It’s natural for children to drift through their early childhood taking their parents for granted, then adolescence rears its ugly head and insouciance morphs into rebellion as they strive to define themselves by being as different from those who gave them life as possible. But for me, now on the eve of my sixteenth year, familial insurrection had yet to seize me—and in reality, it never would. I was my father’s son. His moral compass was inexorably mine. I knew that day I would forever define myself not by contrasts to my father, but by emulation, striving to be a “good man” like him. But the term “good man” was not adequate to describe him. Daddy was a great man who charted his own course in life, guided by his own light, irrespective of the opinions of others, be they my grandmother’s or those of his Brothers in the Lodge. He was the kind of man I wanted to be, the kind of man I was already becoming without fully realizing it.”
“The summer I turned sixteen I shot a man. It was 1969. Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Hurricane Camille destroyed our farm. And I shot a man.”