I hate to write, but I love having written. Writing is hard work, but having written is very satisfying. My name is Raymond L. Atkins, aka Ray Atkins, aka Raymond Atkins, aka Young Faulkner. Okay, I made that last one up, although I do tend toward long sentences. I was once compared to Mark Twain, however. No, really. As I recall, the review said, “that boy ain’t no Mark Twain.” It was a high point in my career, and you can take that to the bank, but I have digressed.

I live in North Georgia on the banks of the Etowah River with a patient wife and a Republican cat. We live in a 130-year-old house that regularly has chunks just sort of fall off. I have seven published books to my credit. Of these, in my humble opinion of course, five are good, one borders on great, and that other one, well, we all have bad days from time to time.

 

No, I won’t tell you which is which. If you’re curious, you’ll just have to track them down and read them, and now you see my strategy.

My first novel, The Front Porch Prophet, was published in 2008 when I was 53, so you could say that I came to writing as a profession late. I was very proud of that book both because it was my first and because it was awarded the Georgia Author of the Year Award for First Novel, which I admit may not be a big deal up in New York City, but around here it is worth a mention.

 

The main thing I learned during the experience of getting that one into readers’ hands was that it is a lot easier to write a book than it is to sell it, at least for a first-time author. People often ask me why I went with Medallion Press in Chicago, and my mostly-serious reply is that I had worked my way up to the M’s in The Writer’s Market before someone said yes.

My second novel, Sorrow Wood, was published in 2009. The great lesson I learned from that experience was that if an author and a publisher have a difference of opinion, the publisher wins, or at least that was true in my case. This disagreement had to do with the cover, which featured a dramatic, gothic-style barn of all things. I hated it then, and I still hate it, not because it was done poorly, even though it did look like somebody’s brother-in-law or perhaps unemployed grown child might have produced it, if you get my meaning, but because it didn’t really have anything to do with the book that came after.

Ray: Can we talk about the cover concept?
Publisher: We love that cover! It’s already at the printer!
Ray: You realize there is not a single building in the entire story that looks like that, right?
Publisher: We want to talk to you about that…

If you’re curious about the outcome of that discussion, you will find that damn barn somewhere around page 178, moldering there like some Poe-esque nightmare. However, if you read on a bit, to page 180 or so, you might notice that it burns down. Hey, it wasn’t me. One of the characters did it.

My third novel, Camp Redemption, came out in 2013 and won the Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction and the Georgia Author of the Year Award for Fiction. My fourth, Sweetwater Blues, was supposed to be my breakout novel, largely because I had read somewhere that statistically more fourth books break out than any other. I bought a pipe with a curved stem and waited. It didn't happen.

 

My fifth book, South of the Etowah, was my first essay collection, and one of its stories was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Then came Set List, which began as a memoir and insisted on becoming a novel, complete with thirteen songs I wrote, making me the Bernie Taupin of the Georgia hills. Along the way I received the Georgia Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, which still embarrasses me in the nicest possible way.

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My seventh book, They All Rest in the Boneyard Now, combined poetry and photographs of interesting tombstones. I am not a great poet, but I had an itch to scratch.

So now you know everything there is to know about my writing career, and enough is enough. As for who the hell is Raymond Atkins, I'm still trying to figure that one out myself. I suppose the short answer is that I am a guy who has spent the better part of two decades making things up and occasionally getting paid for it. I have written novels, essays, poetry, and songs. I have killed characters, resurrected memories, burned down barns, wandered through graveyards, irritated publishers, and shared my opinions.

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I still hate writing sometimes. I suspect I always will. There are days when every sentence seems to require physical labor and the perfect word hides somewhere just beyond my reach. Then there are the days when the words finally line up, when a story becomes what it was supposed to be, when a sentence says exactly what I wanted it to say. Those are the days when I remember why I keep doing this. Because I still love having written.