Writing in Pursuit of Truth
We are all living a story. The question is whether we are paying enough attention to understand it.
Some parts of that story were handed to us—by family, faith, culture, love, loss, success, and failure. Other parts are still being written.
I write to understand those stories honestly.
My novels explore truth through imagined lives: people facing secrets, loyalties, beliefs, losses, and decisions that will not leave them unchanged.
My nonfiction approaches many of the same questions more directly. It asks what we have inherited, what we truly believe, what deserves to be kept, and what may need to be revised.
The forms are different, but the pursuit is the same.
Through fiction and nonfiction, The Pencil-Driven Life invites us to pay attention to the story we are living—and to recognize that the next honest mark is still ours to make.
The Boaz Novels
Most of my fiction is rooted in the fictional world of Boaz, Alabama.
Boaz is more than a setting.
It is a place where memory refuses to stay buried, where families carry old wounds, where churches shape both compassion and silence, and where ordinary people discover that the stories they trusted do not always survive lived experience.
The novels explore questions of truth, belief, doubt, justice, loyalty, love, grief, responsibility, forgiveness, and the complicated stories people tell themselves in order to keep living.
These are not sermons disguised as fiction.
Neither are they novels built around easy answers.
They are stories about people trying to make sense of life when certainty begins to crack.
If you enjoy literary suspense, Southern fiction, mysteries, and character-driven novels that explore the moral pressure beneath ordinary life, I invite you to visit Boaz.
The Pencil-Driven Life Book
My nonfiction explores many of the same questions from a different direction.
Instead of following fictional characters, these books invite readers into direct reflection about attention, inherited beliefs, identity, purpose, and learning to live more honestly.
The Pencil-Driven Life: Letting Go of Purpose and Learning to Live by Attention serves as the foundation for much of the work on this website.
It is not a book of easy answers.
It is an invitation to slow down, pay attention, and begin making one honest mark at a time.
Explore The Pencil-Driven Life book.
Purchase The Pencil-Driven Life book.
Why I Write
People often ask whether my fiction and nonfiction are connected.
To me, they have always been part of the same lifelong pursuit.
For decades I pursued truth through faith.
Later, that pursuit required me to question many of the beliefs I had once accepted with certainty.
Today I continue that journey through writing.
Sometimes I write essays.
Sometimes I write novels.
Both ask the same question:
What is true about being human?
One explores the question directly.
The other lets readers experience it through story.
Begin Anywhere
There is no required reading order.
Some readers begin with The Pencil-Driven Life book.
Others begin with one of the Boaz novels.
Many return to different books over time because different seasons of life raise different questions.
However you begin, I hope these books encourage you to slow down, look more carefully, and pursue truth with both curiosity and humility.
Thank you for reading.
The Pencil-Driven Life 