During the pandemic I needed distraction from the political rhetoric playing out on social media and national news. As the blame game increased, the focus on the voting dead fascinated me even more. I wrote a story offering a solution: getting the dead to vote. Growing up in Jacksonville, N.C., and teaching at the University of Alabama and Virginia Commonwealth University helped me write a Southern narrative and capture a sense of place.
I intertwined my love of horror films with the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, its 2008 Amendment, and U.S voting laws. The result is my debut novella, The Voting Dead Project, a quirky murder mystery.
I hope VDP makes readers grimace, shake (not bash) their heads, and chuckle as the past few years of politics have done to me. The Voting Dead Project, focuses on a cabal’s desire to control future elections by registering dead Confederates and their dead male descendants to vote.
As a graduate and Instructor at the University of Utah and Professor Emeritus at Western Washington University, I filled my pages with fond memories of students. Therefore, my story focuses on two U of U alumni best friends, begins in Bellingham, WA, and spends time in two famous cemeteries in Virginia and North Carolina. The takeaway, “Vote now, while you’re alive!”