Stories from Cold Springs
This is a storytelling podcast that celebrates the creativity in everything from the mundane to the extraordinary. Creativity knows no bounds, and Stories from Cold Springs nurtures the story in all of us.
Listening to the host, J Stephen Beam, makes you want to grab a cup of sweet tea and join him on a wrap-around porch in Mississippi. The hours feel like minutes and you can't wait for the next visit (episode).
Stories from Cold Springs
Eat Pinto Beans to Get into Med School
Every storyteller starts somewhere. For J. Stephen Beam, it began in the red clay hills of northeast Mississippi, where stories were passed around like heirloom recipes—spoken with reverence, humor, and heart. In this premiere episode of Stories from Cold Springs, Stephen steps out from behind the narrator’s chair and into the spotlight to share his own story—one rooted in family, hard work, and a lifelong yearning to create.
Interviewed by his wife, Dawn Beam—an accomplished judge and podcast host herself—Stephen opens up with gentle candor about his winding path from a 60-acre family farm, to the classroom, to a decades-long career as a physician. But even as he was healing others, a quieter voice inside was always asking, When do we tell our own stories?
That answer arrived later in life, sparked by an act both simple and profound: digging a grave for a beloved dog. That moment would become the emotional first scene in The Death Letter, Stephen’s debut novel set in the fictional town of Cold Springs—a place not unlike the one where he grew up.
What follows is a conversation full of laughter, memory, and meaning. Stephen reflects on the power of imagination, the detours we take, and the truth that creativity doesn't come with a deadline. His second novel, The Bondage of Innocents, tackles the subject of human trafficking with both urgency and empathy, and two more novels are already in the works.
More than just a personal history, this episode is a quiet call to anyone who’s ever felt a story stirring inside. Whether your medium is music, woodworking, painting, or pie crusts—Stephen reminds us that the creative spark never truly fades. It waits. And when the time is right, it lights up everything.
After you give this episode a listen, you will understand the episode's title!
Hello everybody and welcome to Stories from Cold Springs, a place where we talk about creativity and storytelling. I'm your host, jay Stephen Bean. Let's talk about storytelling. Traditionally, storytelling was all oral, back in the dawn of our history. As time passed, writing began to take effect and the stories that had been handed down from generation to generation were written down so they could be saved that way, moving further forward toward present day, many other models of recording stories were invented, and we have them today. Today, there are just a plethora of different types of ways to record stories, including digital, including TV, including radio and including podcasts. So things have moved forward in quite an amazing way over the years.
Speaker 2:You might wonder exactly where does the title Stories from Cold Springs come from. Well, you may not know that I'm a novelist. Well, you may not know that I'm a novelist and my stories are set in the mythical small town of Cold Springs, mississippi. And yes, it's based on a real small town where I grew up. You know they say you write stories about what you know and places you know about intimately, and so that's what I've done. Featured in my novels are Cold Springs and the communities around Cold Springs where my earliest memories come from.
Speaker 2:In those days I heard a lot of oral storytelling. People would come to our home and tell stories about the community or tell stories about someone in a community. My mother was a great storyteller. She would tell stories about the community or tell stories about someone in a community. My mother was a great storyteller. She would tell stories about her youth, where she grew up, about her family members, about things that happened in the community that she could remember. I was fascinated by that. I was the youngest of three children, so I didn't get to tell many stories. I mean, what did I know? My father would occasionally tell a story, my oldest brother told a lot of stories and my middle brother tried his best and managed to make up several stories, but I usually kept my mouth shut and nobody asked me for a story anyway. As time passed, I began to read and see the stories there written on paper and I was fascinated with that whole idea. So that's where this podcast springs from, from me individually and personally is from those days.
Speaker 2:I also want to talk about more than just storytelling or story writing or story recording. I want to talk about creativity in general. There are so many other ways to be creative and to actually tell stories, but not in the written word or in the recording word. I think of woodworking, metalworking, cooking. That takes creativity Artists, painters, people who draw pictures creatively. So there are many ways to look at this whole phenomenon of storytelling, not just by the written or the verbal stories. With that being said, my very first guest on this new podcast for me is my partner, my fellow collaborator, my best friend and my wife. Isn't it nice when all those can be said together. Dawn Beam also has her own podcast available out there wherever you might find your favorite shows. So welcome Dawn.
Speaker 1:Hello Stephen, Thanks for having me on your first podcast.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for being here. You give me a certain sense of confidence by your being here.
Speaker 1:You're going to do great.
Speaker 2:Well, I mentioned that Dawn has her own podcast. Would you tell us a little bit about your podcast?
Speaker 1:I have a podcast called Hope Mississippi and in that podcast we tell wonderful stories of hope throughout Mississippi. We also talk about the needs in Mississippi. One in four of our kids lives in poverty. One in five are food deprived. So it's important that we educate Mississippians about the need for hope in some of our darkest areas. Also, to educate about the science of hope. I read a book called Hope Science by Chan Hellman and it really inspired me to realize that a lot of people just can't see that tomorrow can be better than today, and so as we help them to set goals and show them that they can in fact improve their lives, that builds hope and they say, hope begets hope. So my dream is for Hope Mississippi to help unify Mississippians around the needs of our state and encourage Mississippians around the needs of our state and encourage Mississippians to get involved.
Speaker 2:That sounds wonderful and uplifting and I can assure the listeners out there that I've heard her shows and they are very uplifting. If someone out there would like to just check out what you're doing, how could they find one of your podcasts?
Speaker 1:I have them posted on a Facebook page called Hope Mississippi and they're also on your Spotify Apple. Several different domains carry Hope Mississippi.
Speaker 2:Today, Dawn is going to switch the tables on what I hope to do in the future. My goal is to have guests on and find out about what they do in their creative walk in this life, but today I'm under the gun, so fire away.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm excited to help tell your story You're growing up and about your wonderful book and also the many talents that you have and why you appreciate the importance of storytelling. So the setting is Cold Springs, but that's based on your growing up. Where'd you grow up? Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:In northeast Mississippi. There's an area there that is different from any other area in the state. There are a lot of hills. It's basically the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, without all the big mountains there mostly hills. It's a rural area and the small town the main town in the county is the county seat. It's called Fulton, mississippi.
Speaker 2:I didn't grow up in Fulton. I grew up out from Fulton, actually about 10 miles, on a little farm, a 60-acre farm. While I was growing up we farmed that little farm. Only about half of it was cleared for fields, but I grew up working in those fields and in gardens. It's not the best place in the world that particular area to raise crops, but everyone raised crops.
Speaker 2:Both my grandfathers were farmers, so my father I called him Daddy had his own little farm. He bought some land from his father, my grandfather. However, it wasn't a good way to make a living, so he also worked in other ways, such as mainly, I recall growing up he cut timber for a living. While my mother was a housewife, as most women were back in those days we're talking about the 50s and early 60s she was actually in charge of the farming most of the time. I had an older brother who was old enough to operate the machinery, and he was actually my hero, more so than my own father was, and so I hung around with him as much as I could growing up, but I had all those chores that people on farms have to do. We had electricity but we didn't have indoor plumbing so there was water to be drawn from the well, so that was one of my chores Feeding our animals, which included a mare that we used for plowing, and occasionally my just older than me brother and I would ride her, but she had the unique ability to find the nearest tree with a low hanging limb and she would scrape us off and we never seemed to be able to break her of that habit. So we eventually gave up.
Speaker 2:My best friend, my running around buddy in those days, was my brother, just older than me. We had to work together and we played little boy games together cowboys and Indians and all sorts of things like that climbing. We had three trees close together. We turned those into a pirate ship and we could go from one tree to the other across those limbs. There were vines in there that sometimes we can swing on. So we played a lot of imaginative games. Most of the games and the idea came from my older brother and when he got tired of them we would just have to quit because it's the kind of stuff that I couldn't play alone. So that's how I grew up.
Speaker 2:I went to a little county school through the ninth grade and then we moved on to Fulton, which again is a county seat, and the high school was there. There were, I think, 24 people in my junior high class and I went to Fullerton. There were 130, so I was a fish out of water for a while. I was always a pretty good student but I was intimidated, especially my first year there. But I always had these thoughts of stories in my head that I never tried to do anything with them, but they were always there. I guess you could say I had a great imagination.
Speaker 2:I started really reading when I was around sixth grade.
Speaker 2:I read before that picture books and that kind of thing, but today I think they're called chapter books.
Speaker 2:I really started reading in the sixth grade. I read two books that really affected me. One was called the Black Stallion, which I'm sure some of you have heard of, and the other was called Light in the Forest. Those were the two first long novel-length books that I read, and I remember being charmed and amazed by the fact that someone had written words down and here it was, on these pieces of paper that I read, and I could see in my mind's eye what they saw while they were writing it. Now, we're all individuals, so I'm sure I saw it a little bit differently, but that seemed almost magical to me. The very idea that someone could do that held a great wish inside me to be able to do such a thing. But as time passed, as life goes on, you get into your life and you do a lot of other things instead of writing. So I was late coming to the writing game, at least to the point of getting my work published.
Speaker 1:So let me just brag a little bit about you. You served as a doctor for many years a medical doctor, and worked with the veterans. The VA center helped establish a pre-medical clinic in the Hattiesburg area. So you have done a lot of things before you started writing in the last few years, right?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, when I was in high school I thought I hated science. I'd had a kind of bad experience in the ninth grade with basic biology, but my grades were okay Actually they were pretty good, but I didn't really like it that much, I didn't think. But in the 12th grade I decided to take chemistry and my teacher there was amazing to me. He was such a cool guy who was so organized, yet he allowed his students to talk if they had something to say about the class. And I fell in love with chemistry just basic chemistry that you would learn in high school. I liked the way things worked, I liked the smells in the lab, I liked everything about it.
Speaker 2:So I decided then that I wanted to be a chemistry teacher, a high school chemistry teacher, and I really hadn't thought about it until the 12th grade. So that was my goal. I went to a community well, we called it a junior college, they call it community college now they're in the small town of Fulton and went on and graduated from the University of Mississippi, commonly called Ole Miss. I found a job teaching high school chemistry. Seven years I taught chemistry and physics and biology. Those were the main courses I taught.
Speaker 1:Just have to make this plug Of the seven years that you taught, three out of the seven you were a star teacher and I think that's just so incredible To know you. You're just a loving and caring person and I think that showed in not only your teaching. But then how did you come to go to medical school?
Speaker 2:Speaking of teaching, I love teaching. I love the kids. I always have to remember that I taught classes that the students that were in there generally wanted to be in there. So problems with discipline wasn't a big deal with me and I just, I guess I had a knack with dealing with kids who got a little unruly, so I never had any major discipline problems, had any major discipline problems, so that's another reason I loved it.
Speaker 2:I guess I taught at two different schools, but at the end of seven years of teaching well before that last year, somewhere in the middle of that year, I was going through some changes in my life and I had a friend who said he'd always wanted to go to medical school. I really hadn't thought about it, although in college my roommate was pre-med and he later was in medical school and became a physician. The two main girls that I dated not at the same time make that note. Actually they were best friends, but I believe it or not, it worked out they were also pre-med, and so when I was in college those folks, and other folks too, that were in pre-med or chemistry or pre-engineering would give me a hard time about taking the hard chemistry courses, for example, because I really didn't have to take those courses in order to be a teacher. They had more teaching-related chemistry classes that you could take. That would give you the foundation that you needed in order to teach high school science. However, I liked the harder courses, but I guess even more than that, I liked the people that were in those courses and so I took those courses, never thinking that in the future that that would come back to be a great plus for me. So anyway, my friend mentioned medical school and the point I was in in my life. I decided that I would take the MCAT, which is the test you have to take in order to get into medical school, and I did very well on it, not because I'm the sharpest knife in the drawer, but because a lot of it had to do with high school science-related things, which I was very up on.
Speaker 2:I applied for medical school at the University of Mississippi in Jackson, at the medical center, and I must tell this story when I went there for my interview, I had three people who interviewed me. First was a psychiatrist who intimidated me, but I told myself not to fidget, not to talk too much and just to answer his questions. So during the process of the interview, which lasted about 15 minutes, I kept telling myself don't fidget, just answer the man's questions, which I did. And then I had another interview with a biochemist and then finally I met with the chairman of the selection department. There was an eye-opener for me.
Speaker 2:Very nice man, gregarious, made you feel very at ease from the very first, and so he asked me, I suppose, the typical questions. And then he said tell me what you ate growing up. We'd already been through the process of telling him how I grew up, as I've already shared here with you, but he said tell me what you ate growing up. So that kind of stumped me. I mean, it's an easy question, but why would anyone ask that? So I did. I went through the list in my head and I told him what we had to eat. And he said well, you're leaving something out. And I said I don't think so Made me a little nervous actually when he said that.
Speaker 2:So I ran back through my head what I'd said and I just can't think of anything else. He said I bet you ate a lot of pinto beans. And I said well, yeah, that's true, I didn't say that. But yes, we ate a lot of pinto beans. He said you know how? I know that. And I said no. He said I grew up in West Texas on a little farm very much like you just told me about you grew up on, and I ate the same food that you ate, including a lot of pinto beans. To this day, I'm convinced that one of the reasons I got into medical school is because I ate a lot of pinto beans growing up, and so for all you folks who maybe like to get in medical school, start eating pinto beans. I mean, it's a surefire way to get in.
Speaker 2:So you practiced medicine for 35 years, basically here in Mississippi.
Speaker 1:Enjoyed doing that, but always long to write.
Speaker 2:Yes, even when I was a teacher, I would write little stories, and never meaning to keep them, I would just write them out in long hand, cursively, and those stories all were lost. It's probably a good thing, matter of fact, even in junior high I wrote stories, but all those are lost as well. After practicing medicine for several years, I still would do that kind of thing and eventually, some 25, almost 30 years ago now, I wrote a novel. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I did it, and it was a struggle to go from one chapter to the next and try to include things that I could see in my head, because, you must understand, I could see these stories in my head, but then I would put that down on paper and then I would read it and it didn't exactly say what I was seeing. So I worked at getting better with that. I finished it.
Speaker 2:I was proud that I'd been able to do that and at that time in my life I thought to myself well, I'm not going to worry about this anymore, I've written a novel. It's always in the back of my head to write a novel. So I'd done that, so I can move on to something else. But I shared it with three people and all three of those said you should look at trying to get this published. And I said are you crazy? No way I would try to get this published. I didn't want other people seeing my writing. What if it wasn't good enough? So I guess you could say I lacked the courage to move that one step further, to investigate whether or not I actually could get it published. And so that's where I was about three years ago now.
Speaker 1:But all of that changed. So tell us about your first book, the Death Letter.
Speaker 2:Well, let me go back a little then to tell you about that first book, how it came to be. I was nearing retirement from practicing medicine and I knew that I needed something to do. I don't fish very much, I don't really hunt at all. I tried golf over the years and was never very good at it and didn't take the time to get good enough at it. I could have gone out and played with the doctor friends, but I didn't want to put in the time to be good at it. I could have gone out and played with the doctor friends, but I didn't want to put in the time to be good at it. Golf is one of those games that if you don't put in the time and do some practice, you're not going to be very good. It's kind of embarrassing sometimes to go out and everybody else have to wait for you while you look for your ball. What could I do? I'd had several patients over the years who retired without any kind of plan and it seemed invariably they didn't live very long. I'd had many patients who had plans. There were people who did woodworking and even made money at doing woodworking. I had all the guys that wanted to play golf every day. And they did that. That's what they'd always wanted to do. Some wanted to travel which, by the way, don and I like to do, but you can't fill your life doing that. I didn't think, so it came back down to what do I really want to do? And, of course, writing came back into my mind. What would I write? How would I write? I don't know how to write. With those thoughts in mind, I thought I'll just write a little short snippet of a story that involves a man burying his dog. And yes, that came from someplace. Don and I had a sweet black lab that wandered out into the road and ruled Etiwama County, where Fulton is on our old farm place. We have that now and he was hit by a car and we had to have him put down. So they they being the vet clinic said we can take care of the body if you want us to. And we said no, it's our dog, I want to bury him. So we got back up to our house, and across the yard from our house there's a big pine tree, and so I commenced digging that grave. Don didn't like that very much. We had tried to find someone to dig it for me, but I really wanted to do it myself, so we started it, of course, ran into roots and she went off to the nearest little town and got us a pick. I had an ax and a shovel and it took me two or three hours to dig that grave. But I didn't rush. I took my time, didn't hurt myself, rested, drunk plenty of water. I've had some medical training, so I know you need to do that. And we finished that.
Speaker 2:We had our dog, whose name was Noel, by the way. He was on the front porch and we took him out to lay him beside the grave. Neither one of us just wanted to pitch him in, so we carefully led him down into the grave and then we said a few words over him and a little prayer and then threw in the dirt. It was a sad moment for us, but a very graphic moment in my mind, and it had been in my mind. This was in August.
Speaker 2:So in October I decided I was going to write that story and that was all I was going to do. So I began the story and then you get hit with several questions. If you're going to make this a story about yourself, then it would be me digging the grave. But what if somebody else dug the grave? Who would that be? So I had to come up with that character. Well, since I've gone that far with it, I thought what if someone else drives up while he's digging the grave? Who would that be? And that was the first time I met Jesse, who was the main character in the book. Well, why did he come? Does he have a problem? What's going on? How's he related to this man? Did he just know him? Who is this old man digging the grave? Turns out he was the county sheriff and this was his we'll call him adopted son. Not exactly that, but he had grown up in that house. And then the story started to come to me.
Speaker 1:So Cold Springs? Actually, the idea that comes from the area where you grew up in in Etiwamba County is that right?
Speaker 2:That's exactly right.
Speaker 1:And you talked about how Noel died at our house, but that's a house on our property in Etiwamba County. We live currently in South Mississippi, but we have a house in Etiwamba County, so that's where Noel passed, where you dug the grave, and so from there you developed characters that came into that story. Is that right?
Speaker 2:That's right, and we have a house there, a small house that we built some 12 years ago now, but I wanted an old house, so in my story it's an old house that's been there since probably the 1920s, Starting with the burying of the dog and a character driving up and the conversation between the two of them out in rural Etowahma County and I didn't call it Etowahma County the town nearby that these characters had more familiarity with was Cold Springs, which was really Fulton, but I renamed it so that I wouldn't first of all I didn't want to insult anyone, maybe in the future, but also I knew that I could put perhaps structures in that town that are not really there in real life.
Speaker 2:So it just made it easier to write about it.
Speaker 1:It has been well received your book, the Death Letter in the Ittawamba in North Mississippi, because a lot of folks can easily visualize your characters right.
Speaker 2:That's right. I wrote the story, sent it to one of my high school classmates and then to a couple of other people that would know their area and asked them if they thought I had captured the area. And they thought it was spot on. The story itself could certainly have happened there. It was more exciting than my life was, as I was growing up there. But you know it's a novel so you have to make it interesting.
Speaker 2:Now. It was well accepted in that area, but it was accepted all over the state of Mississippi. The only place I think that I really didn't have book signings was over in the Delta area, but South Mississippi, down to the coast, up in North Mississippi. I had signings in all those places and it was in bookstores in the state. And so for a first-time book from a local publisher, it did extremely well that by the publisher and some other authors that I met over the course of not only my book signings but just in general, because once I became known as a writer then I met other people who were trying to do the same thing. So the acceptance was there.
Speaker 1:So now the death letter is coming out in a reprint right in April.
Speaker 2:It'll be out in April. The original was hardback. I should mention how I even got it published so that's difficult. Published through, actually, a friend of Dawn's who had published, by this time I think, five books, and he put me on to a publisher in Jackson, a small independent publisher who looked at the book, liked it, acted also as the editor and not only the publisher, and several months later he was able to get it out for me.
Speaker 1:So tell us just a little bit about the death letter. Don't give away the surprise parts, but just kind of a little tease to the listeners of what the death letter is about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is a surprise in it and no, I'm not going to give that away. But the reason that Jesse comes to see the sheriff is because it's been a year now since Jesse's wife disappeared with no sign of anything wrong in the house. He came home one day from university he has a backstory himself, but basically he stayed over at the university, which is about 70 miles away, during the week and went to school to finish up his college degree. She was a school teacher, his wife Mary, in the local area there. So that was a system that they had. He would go over there and spend Monday through Thursday and then come home and she would always be there to greet him, except on one particular day. He comes home and she's not there. Her car is missing, her dog is missing. He calls her parents and they say they've been a little worried about her, but she's probably just out shopping or something or visiting with a friend. She didn't come home at all that night, so of course he's getting even more worried. He calls the principal at the school and said well, she didn't come to work yesterday either and we haven't been in touch with her. He talked to his father basically his father, the sheriff who said, well, she's probably just out and neglected to tell you, but he agreed that it was worrisome. So so they come and investigate the house. Can find nothing out of the ordinary, so eventually they start giving up. They even had the state police come and investigate the situation and nobody really seemed to be that concerned anymore, except Jesse. What had happened to his wife? It's been a year, maybe she just ran off, but why wouldn't she let her parents know she was close to them? And she hadn't let them know anything either. So that's the setup for the story.
Speaker 2:I will add here that I was at a book signing and that's basically what I would say. People, what's your story about this particular book signing in a small town, mississippi, everyone except they were all ladies, and everyone except one had read the book. And the lady that hadn't read it said well, what exactly is your story about? And I was ready to go into that little spill that I just gave here. And this lady popped up and said it's about relationships. And this lady popped up and said it's about relationships and it's about how mistakes you make when you're young come back to haunt you later. And I said may I use that so many times. That's what I say, instead of giving the story the back story that I just gave you about it. That's what it's about. It's done well. It's been called a page-turner. People from all over, from every strata of life those with money, those who don't have much money teachers, doctors, loggers, bankers have all thoroughly enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:Lots of twists and turns. I don't know how you know have such an incredible imagination adultery, crystal meth labs, murder, all kinds of things all rolled up in one. You just never know what direction it's going to turn, and I'm very proud of you and what you have done with that. Now you've got a second book that's out. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2:The second book. First, let me tell you how I came to write this particular book. I was well on the way of writing a second book and Donna and I were talking one night. She said you know you should write about human trafficking. And I said I don't know anything about human trafficking other than the very superficial things that most people who listen to the news or read the news know about what a scourge it is right now. But I can learn.
Speaker 2:And so I went online and bought some books and read those books and started really perusing the internet for stories. I decided, well, I was going to do it, and I came up with a story about a young 16-year-old girl who gets caught up in human trafficking. Well, that part wasn't so hard to come up with because it happens all the time. I looked for a little bit different device to write about, first of all, to make the story, and the second thing was to make it as real as I could, in a way that people understood that this could happen to literally anyone 16 years there are cases down to 9 or 10 years old people taken into human trafficking, male and female, mostly females and so I wrote about her, who's a total innocent who was pulled into human trafficking through no fault of her own and was stuck. How can we help her get unstuck, was my thought. That's the gist of the story. You learn about what she goes through.
Speaker 2:Again, it's set in cold springs. Again it's set in cold springs, and so it occurred to me. Just like we are today, if we don't know much about it, it goes on all the time and we're here amongst it. So what about the other people in town? Did they know this was going on? Well, of course they didn't. What are they doing? They are living their life, but I want to write about them as well, but I wanted to put something in there that made it. So there's a reason for them to get interested in her predicament, and so it's kind of a parallel storyline. That storyline begins in Milwaukee, and I love Milwaukee. I spent three years there when I was doing my medical residency, and so I started it there, and eventually everybody ends up in Cold Springs, and then we just have to see what happens to her.
Speaker 1:But again, the consistency of relationships. You have lots of very healthy relationships and then unhealthy relationships and that book is called the Bondage of Innocence, but it also helps people to open their eyes to the idea that human trafficking can be right under your nose and you just don't realize that's going on. I know you've got our Attorney General, lynn Fitch, who's written a brief statement on the back, and also you have information in there about how folks can learn about human trafficking and be a part of the solution.
Speaker 2:That's true, and along with that, in one of the books that I read, it was written by a lady from Oregon who specializes in rescuing mainly adult women from human trafficking. It's a fascinating book, and In your Own Backyard is the name of it. I highly recommend it if you have an interest in learning more. But when I finished the rough draft, I decided I needed someone who knew what they were talking about to look at it and see how far off from what reality is. Did I write this book? Because I wanted to be sure not to write something that wasn't based on the truth of the problem.
Speaker 2:And so I emailed her organization and, lo and behold, the next day she emailed me back and said I have a little time now, send it to me and I'll look at it. And so she did. And a couple of weeks later she sent it back, said I really enjoyed your story. Uh, you wanted some recommendations, and here they are. And she gave me about four recommendations and I followed all those to a t. So I'm comfortable that there's a lot of truth in it. People ask if my stories are even with the first book, if they're based on fact, and my answer answer and I mean this is I don't know how you write anything fiction-wise that isn't somewhat based on fact, because we live our lives and we learn things and we can read a lot of fiction, which I've done over the past but it doesn't stick in your mind for the most part like what really happens in life and affects people. So that was my goal with this book is to make it as accurate as I could.
Speaker 1:And so where can folks get a copy of your latest book, the Bondage of Innocence?
Speaker 2:Well, this is by a different publisher, an original publisher out of the Jackson area. As I've already mentioned, fabulous gentleman by the name of Joe Lee Doesn't work outside the state of Mississippi and doesn't have any wish to do that. He's an author in his own right and he's a very good editor as well. So I decided to look for another way to get my books out there. And because, again through Dawn, her sister's husband had had dealings with a company called Morgan James out of New York and they have several sites around the country, as a matter of fact, internationally they agreed to publish it.
Speaker 1:Do you have any other books in the works in the pipeline?
Speaker 2:She asked that as if she didn't know, didn't she? Yes, busy at work, editing and finalizing my third book, the Cotton House. That will involve a lot of things in the way that I grew up. It's set more in the past than it is the present. I don't know exactly when it'll be published, but we already have one book new book and a reprint coming out this year. So it'll come out no later than next year, and I'm basically working now on my fourth book, fire Tower.
Speaker 2:It has to do with some things that happened also in the more recent past and also in the more recent past. All of these are set in that same area, around the basic place that Jesse grew up and where the sheriff was. All involve the town of Cold Springs, and there are other surrounding towns that I don't change the names of. For example, there are scenes in Tupelo, there are scenes in a little town called Belmont, things in Birmingham and things in Memphis. I'm comfortable there. So my plan is I'll probably never write anything other than set in those areas, but that one would come out, I guess, two years from now, about 15,000 words into it.
Speaker 2:I have in my mind what happens. I just need to write it out. When I write my stories I may not know exactly where I'm going, but Stephen King once said that create your characters, create their surroundings and write about them, and you will be amazed at some of the things your characters do. And I've had characters say things or do things that were not even in my head until they ended up on I shouldn't say on paper, but the computer as I typed it. So I'm comfortable now in knowing that I can write a book. I'm comfortable in knowing that it'll have an end point and I have gained the confidence that I need to do those. So, as I'm doing this new book that I mentioned that will come out hopefully in two years it still has a lot of work to be done on it, scenes to write, but I know basically how it's going to end. Once you get to that point and know where you're headed, it makes it much, much easier to get there.
Speaker 1:I'm so proud of you for taking on writing and for really the wonderful comments that I've heard along the way as people have read your work. So what about this podcast? What is your vision for that?
Speaker 2:Well, what a great question. I would like to talk about creativity in general. There's so many stories out there that really aren't shared that often. You can hear them on specialty broadcast, I guess, or on public radio. But there are people who do things that are very creative that we kind of pass by and not considering them creative. Now, I'm sure many of you have gone to someone who's a woodworker, builds things and kind of explain what you want and they say, well, tell me about it. And then they come up with it. They're very creative that way. Not only with that. But what about musicians, for example? Don and I recently met a very talented cellist. He's been all over the world playing his music. He's well thought of, so people know about him. He might have stories and we've heard some of his stories. That would be good for a storytelling time like this, with all of his abilities to be creative and what he's done with his life. So there are just so many avenues. So that's my goal to maybe have one podcast a month, maybe some more often if I run across people that I want to go ahead and get recorded so that we'll have their story down.
Speaker 2:But from the mundane stories people would consider mundane, of how you build something in your woodworking shop to the sublime stories of a world-renowned cellist. But they have that thing in common they're creative and they're creators. And that's not something that is just for certain people. There are many, many people with that gift. Many of us don't use them very often and it's the kind of gift, say, a woodworker. You might even have the gift of woodworking, but if you don't ever try and hone your skills, you'll never be a great woodworker. Same thing with musicians, same thing with chefs they have to learn and work at their craft. So those are the kind of things. And then, obviously, I want to talk to writers and novelists about how they create the stories that they put out there and how they create their characters. I'm sure I'll learn a lot. So that's my goal for this. I'm excited about it, very excited about it. I think the possibilities are great for doing this. It's just another creative side of my personality that I can use.
Speaker 1:We talked about your book writing, but you've also been very active in the theater. I'm reminded, the first time I ever met you, you were running a guitar and singing. So you come at this through a variety of experiences. What is your hope to accomplish with your podcast?
Speaker 2:I think, for people to know that there are other people who are out there creating things, and my hope would be for those who, like I was at one time, don't have the courage to step out and try to do something on their own, or that's passed them by. They're maybe no longer particularly young, or maybe they're young and nobody's ever told them they're good at some particular something, that they will hear the stories of these folks and they will then step out and reach into themselves and get in touch with their own creativity, because I assure you it's there.
Speaker 1:And it's very rewarding when we share that creativity with others.
Speaker 2:I can't think of anything more creative than that.
Speaker 1:Well, honey, I think that's about a wrap for today.
Speaker 2:My goodness, that went by quickly. I hope it was that way for the listener. Join us next time for our next edition of Stories from Cold Springs, and thank you for listening. God bless.
