Stoneburner

Stoneburner, the second posthumous novel from William Gay, is now out and is available through Amazon.com. The book is published by the William Gay Archive, under the imprint Anomolaic Press. I am credited with the jacket and book design, as well as editing and proofing the manuscript.

From the description at Amazon:
"Stoneburner is a hardboiled detective story written as only William Gay could do it. The story is set in the mid 1970s and includes a jaded private eye named Stoneburner, a redneck Vietnam vet named Thibodeaux, a beautiful young blonde named Cathy Meecham and an ex-Sheriff named Cap Holder loosely based on Buford Pusser. Stoneburner is the private eye who has abandoned his office in Memphis to live on the banks of the Tennessee River where he is building a cabin. The story follows him as he meets a local retired sheriff who made a fortune when Hollywood produced a movie based on his exploits cleaning up the drug dealers in his rural county. However, now the Sheriff, Cap Holder, has run through the money on ill conceived business plans, fancy cars, big boats and expensive young girlfriends. He comes to Stoneburner when his plans to recoup his losses on a coke deal goes wrong and the young girlfriend turns up missing, both at the same time.

Cap wants Stoneburner to find both the money and the girl. The redneck named Thibodeaux just happened to be in the right place at the wrong time and was able to make off with a briefcase full of drug money and the young blonde. Thibodeaux and the girl are on the run, moving across Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas, leaving a trail a mile wide with Stoneburner not far behind. Thibodeaux and the girl buy a Cadillac purportedly owned by Elvis which eventually ends up in the top of a tree in the Ozarks. Stoneburner quickly figures out that he is not the only person that wants to find Thibodeaux. The drug lord, a local Nashville music producer, who was supplying the cocaine is on the trail as well.

The book follows two tracks, starting with Thibodeaux who is living in rural Tennessee and getting by as best he can. He is a town drunk constantly in trouble with the law, leaving behind a string of wrecked cars and trucks. However, his luck changes one night when he figures out someone is using an abandoned airstrip to fly in drugs and cases it out until one night a plane lands and he is able to make off with a briefcase full of cash. Once he has the money he is able to pick up the blonde, who was double-crossing both Cap Holder and the drug dealers, and away they go."

The manuscript was edited by J.M. White, Lamont Ingalls, Paul Nitsche, Sheila Kennedy, and Susan McDonald.
Jacket cover painting by William Gay.
Jacket design by Paul Nitsche.
Book design by Earl Madden and Paul Nitsche.

Announcing williamgay.net

I'm very excited to announce the website dedicated to Southern author William Gay and the William Gay Archive. With contributions from the Archive members, I have put together a website that celebrates the writings and paintings of a great American writer.

We will be updating the site with news and information on upcoming posthumous releases from Anomolaic Press and the other publishers handling the material. There are galleries of William throughout his life and his oil paintings. We have talked about putting up an unreleased short story or two down the road. The site will continue to grow, and our hope is that William's prose will continue to touch readers as it has touched us.

I will still continue this blog of my involvement with editing and doing photography and design for the Archive, as this continues to be a very exciting part of my life.

www.williamgay.net

Jacket Design for William Gay's Stoneburner

It's hard for me to express what a strange honor it is for me to be working on the writings and jacket design for William's second posthumous release, Stoneburner. Long before I became involved with the archive project, I was a fan. I would read William's books and imagine what I would do for the covers. His writing spoke to some of my imagery and I felt a commonality. And so the years pass and an unlikely fate intervenes.

My original proposal for the Stoneburner cover was to do it entirely of my own design. JM White, William's friend, publisher, and director of the archive pushed for inclusion of one of William's paintings. He explained that William always wanted his paintings on the covers of his books, and it bothered William when the larger publishers didn't use them. During his lifetime, only two books had his paintings on the covers, Wittgenstein's Lolita and Time Done Been Won't Be No More, both published by JM White and Wild Dog Press.

I looked over many of William's paintings and selected a snowy farm house scene. There is a location in the novel where this is fitting, and I liked the painting's somber tone. The symmetrical composition of the painting naturally lent itself to both front and back covers. I made an effort not to manipulate any of the image, and to cover as little of it as possible and still have it work in a larger design.

The front cover for the novel Stoneburner. Typography and design by Paul Nitsche. Painting by William Gay.

The back and front covers for the novel Stoneburner. Typography and design by Paul Nitsche. Painting by William Gay.

In adding the ink brushstrokes and drips, I was thinking about the growing unraveling for the characters in the novel, the sense that things are falling apart and becoming uncontrolled. At some point during the design of this book, I began to realize the cover was an unexpected collaboration with one of my favorite authors. I can only hope William approves.

The full jacket design for the novel Stoneburner. Typography and design by Paul Nitsche. Painting by William Gay.

The full winter farm painting by William Gay.

Anomolaic Press to Publish Stoneburner

The inception of Anomolaic Press began in early 2014, when I was helping a group of William Gay's friends and admirers prepare what was to be the first manuscript of posthumous writings, This Ride's Not Over Yet. Our original intention was that we would publish the book ourselves under the imprint Anomolaic Press. During this time I created the two-headed whippoorwill image and Anomolaic Press logo. The manuscript was shelved when Dzanc Books voiced interest in purchasing the rights to Little Sister Death and The Lost Country.

The manuscript of Stoneburner has been completed for some time, but it was necessary to explore all the publishing options with different presses. In the end, we decided to release the book ourselves, and resurrect Anomolaic Press. In doing so, it will ensure several points: we have absolute editorial control, the book looks and is printed they way we think William would want, and most importantly, control over all profits so that they may go to William Gay's family.

The word anomolaic was a favorite of William's, and appears in several of his writings. We thought it an appropriate name for our press, as well as a tribute to the man himself.

Little Sister Death Now Out in Paperback

Little Sister Death, the first William Gay book to be published posthumously, is now out in paperback from Dzanc Books. This is one of the William Gay manuscripts that I helped edit, and I'm pleased to see it continue to be published and find new readers.

From Amazon:
David Binder is a young, successful writer living in Chicago and suffering from writer’s block. He stares at the blank page, and the blank page stares back — until inspiration strikes in the form of a ghost story that captivated him as a child. With his pregnant wife and young daughter in tow, he sets out to explore the myth of Virginia Beale, Faery Queen of the Haunted Dell. But as his investigation takes him deeper and deeper into the legacy of blood and violence that casts its shadow over the old Beale farm, Binder finds himself obsessed with a force that’s as wicked as it is seductive.

A stirring literary rendition of Tennessee’s famed Curse of the Bell Witch, Little Sister Death skillfully toes the line between Southern Gothic and horror, and further cements William Gay’s legacy as not only one of the South’s finest writers, but among the best that American literature has to offer.