Tag Archives: SEVEN ANGELS

My little foul-mouthed scrappers will return in my novel GHOST SHOW

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I’ve noted in this space before that most of my books and short stories occupy the same universe that mostly varies from the town of Seven Angels, Tennessee, to the small city of Middletown, Indiana. The former is the focus of my newest novel, SEVEN ANGELS, and the latter is the setting of my 2025 novel THAT OCTOBER.

I’ve plotted references to those locales in most of my fiction, including my upcoming novel GHOST SHOW, which is set in Middletown in 1948 (THAT OCTOBER was set in Middletown in 1984).

And there’s been a few times I’ve had characters cross over from stories to novels. I’ve previously mentioned here Butcher Crabtree, who pops up in SEVEN ANGELS and a few stories.

But in GHOST SHOW, when it shows up this winter, you’ll see some characters I introduced in “A Fighting Life,” a short story in the 2025/2026 anthology FIGHTING WORDS, edited by Scott Bradburn and published by Leonardo Audio.

Four of the Anderson siblings, who are the focus of GHOST SHOW, are in “A Fighting Life,” which is also set in Middletown in 1948.

They’re pretty different characters in some ways, and very much the same characters in other ways. In “A Fighting Life,” siblings Marie, Saul and Peter get into vacant-lot-punchfests when the three, all of them teens or pre-teens, discover they can make money by letting other neighborhood kids fight them for nickels. They’re foul-mouthed little bastards, as Courtney Fabrizio, the marvelous narrator of my story for Leonardo Audio, alludes to. (You should read the story, but you really should get the audio version of the anthology, particularly for the amazing work of Courtney.).

In the story, Marie, Saul and Peter take on all comers – and get rescued by their big sister Rachel as they’re about to be busted by the cops – and it’s a story that is, by turns, fun and dire.

In GHOST SHOW, Marie, Saul and Peter are still the youngest members of the Anderson family and Rachel sometimes rescues and sometimes needs rescuing. GHOST SHOW is a story that’s very, very loosely based on my mother and her siblings when they were young, and the four are based on one of my aunts, two of my uncles and my mom. There wasn’t as much mayhem in real life as I injected into either the short story or the novel.

I’d encourage you to buy FIGHTING WORDS not just for my story “A Fighting Life” but also for the really crisp and tough writing by the other writers in the anthology. And it might tide you over until GHOST SHOW arrives.

The link to buy FIGHTING WORDS:

My novel GHOST SHOW is coming

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I wrote GHOST SHOW between writing SEVEN ANGELS and THAT OCTOBER.

I’ve always described it as “Rich Man, Poor Man,” but there’s no rich men. It’s VERY loosely based on the post-war years, when my mother’s family had moved to Muncie, Indiana (in the novel from Seven Angels, in real life, from Jamestown, Tennessee) to find work and a life.

The characters, several siblings from the Anderson family, work, play and try to survive and find their consciousness raised in the process.

The novel has gangsters, traveling Romani, infidelity, untimely death, lesbian college professors, a Bela Lugosi-type washed-up movie star, a traveling “ghost show,” a haunted theater with a real ghost named Milo and the President of the United States, Harry Truman, who visited Muncie that year as part of his election campaign.

But know this: Truman’s role is the most tearjerking of the entire book.

We’re going to publish it through Constellate Publishing in the coming months.

Photo above is by my friend John Disher and it’s a photo of the real Rivoli Theater, taken from just below its dome, in the theater’s final days before demolition in the 1980s.

GHOST SHOW is a big book. If you’re looking for a long and absorbing read, this will be it.

I’ll keep you updated here and on social media.

To ‘stack or not to ‘stack: Substack

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I’ve no idea when I first heard of Substack, the online writing and posting platform that a lot of people use and quite a few people forego. For the time being, and probably into the future, I’ll be in the latter camp. But Substack has become a hoppin’ place, especially for writers and other people who express their thoughts.

I was thinking about Substack today after reading the latest newsletter from writer Andrew Careaga. You should look him up and enjoy his writing, not only on his various platforms but also his fiction, including his short fiction story in the brand-new Bad Intentions anthology. (I’ve got a story in the anthology too; Michael Downing edited the book and Literary Kitchen published it. It’s out now.)

In the newsletter from Andrew I received today, he talks about the pros and cons of being on Substack and – this is oversimplifying, so I apologize – notes that he’s got his hands full, like a lot of us, with being ON EVERY FREAKIN’ PLATFORM IMAGINABLE. It’s the online presence writers feel they must maintain if they want to reach readers and, truth be told, people who will pay to read our work.

Andrew cites the good and bad points of Substack and links to a Guardian story from February reporting how Substack is generating revenue for and from what the Guardian calls “Nazi newsletters.”

Considering the number of people who are acquainted with Substack’s platforming of white supremacist groups and writers, it’s a little surprising that so many people who are definitely NOT Nazis, like Heather Cox Richardson, are so present on Substack. Richardson is one of 50 million Substack users worldwide, according to the Guardian.

There’s unlikely to be a mass exodus from Substack similar to that when the new owner of Twitter took over and threw the doors open wide for white supremacists and Nazis. The frequently-cited point is that if you start letting Nazis into your bar and more Nazis follow, you eventually become a Nazi bar,

And yes, I’m still on what used to be Twitter. I made the move to Bluesky for my social media platform of choice a couple of years ago. And I should note that a lot of people who temporarily left Twitter have come back.

I’m on social media platforms owned or run by truly reprehensible people and corporations, namely Meta – three separate Facebook pages – plus Instagram and Threads.

Don’t bother to tell me if Nazis own Pinterest. I have a page there, created just this year to promote my new crime novel SEVEN ANGELS. But I’ve all but given up on posting anything there because I have virtually no followers. So I don’t care if it turns into a Nazi bar with kicky hairdo and decorating ideas.

FFS, I’m even on LinkedIn.

There’s no social media or writing platform that is without concerns and extenuating circumstances. If we’re waiting for a platform owned by a corporation that isn’t reprehensible in some ways, we might have a very long wait. Why? Because there are few good corporations when it comes to mass communication. It’s their real estate, obviously, and we just toil there. That’s the case with virtually any social media platform.

And, of course, wherever people gravitate, dating back to the days of the town square, aberrant and abhorrent views will be presented.

I post on many of those social media platforms – I’m calling out my own compromised moral stance – and will continue to post here, a WordPress site I’ve had for 15 years and one on which I have subscribers (all unpaid) and which gets a couple of thousand views each month.

So my problem with Substack, overlooking the kind of moral compromise that allows me to keep using social media platforms that are equally awful, is that I’m not likely to start over and do anything but spin my wheels, i.e. the Pinterest Effect.

Is all of this thinking flawed? Yes. Is there a good solution that gives me and my work some exposure but doesn’t compromise my morals? No.

But Substack is, for the moment, a bridge too far for me. Your mileage my vary.

Here’s that Guardian story Andrew and I refer to:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-substack-makes-money-from-hosting-nazi-newsletters

Where to find our words and signed books (scrawled in my case)

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If you’re in or near Muncie, Indiana, and missed out last week when Jill Blocker and I were in town, you can find signed copies of our books at:

Ink Drinkers Anonymous Bookstore

Aw Yeah Comics- Muncie

EB and Bertha C Ball Center

The Orchard Shop at Minnetrista Museum & Gardens

Book touring. Touring with books. Book talks. Talking about books, I’m kinda tired, can you tell?

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Okay, so this post won’t make any sense because even though I had a good night’s sleep I’m still kinda brain-fried. So prepare yourself. Head-scratching is not only likely, but recommended.

My longtime friend and fellow author Jill Blocker – she’s one of the masterminds behind Constellate Creatives and Constellate Publishing – just held two days of book talks and signings in Muncie, Indiana. We’re still groggy, and Jill has only just begun her extended book tour.

Two days, you scoff. That’s barely any tine at all.

On the contrary, we packed five book talks and signings and an afterparty event at a local martini bar, RoHo’s, into those two days. We spoke at the Ball State University-affiliated EB and Bertha C Ball Center, Carnegie Library, Ink Drinkers Anonymous Bookstore, Aw Yeah Comics and the Orchard Shop at Minnetrista, all in Muncie, where I was a newspaper reporter and editor for 40 years and Jill attended Ball State and interned at the newspaper. That’s where we met, a little less than 20 years ago, and we kept in touch. When we published our novels WHAT WAS BEAUTIFUL AND GOOD, THAT OCTOBER, SEVEN ANGELS and HAPPILY AFTER EVER – the latter two newly out this summer – we decided we’d publish books by other authors who wanted to work with us. We’ve published one other so far and have others in the pipeline – and we’re looking for more authors. Go to the Constellate Creatives website for more. (Link below.)

Anyway, the sadist who set up the Indiana portion of our book tour (raises hand) didn’t leave much room for seeing family and friends or even breathing while we were in the Hoosier state, yet we somehow managed to.

Now Jill is off to Seattle and NYC and back to her home base of Zurich, Switzerland.

At a couple of events, we were joined by our talented friend Sara McKinley, who painted the beautiful cover for THAT OCTOBER. That’s Sara on the right there.

And we’ll be doing all this again, probably next year. Hopefully with even more books by other authors.

Nest year? Man, I better get some sleep.

Jill Blocker and I sat down to talk about our new books, writing, publishing and more

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My longtime friend and fellow author Jill Blocker and I have been all over the Internet lately, talking about our new novels – HAPPILY AFTER EVER for Jill and SEVEN ANGELS for me – and we had the idea of interviewing each other and asking a few questions that we haven’t really addressed in the many articles, interviews and podcasts so far.

In the process, we worked out all the problems in the universe.

You believe that, right?

We did talk about our early writing days, what our journalism backgrounds brought to our writing and more.

For example, Jill on journalism:

I wish journalists were valued more in our society. Some of the most brilliant people I know are journalists -including some of the characters in the book. Journalists have the ability to sit down and understand important, complex issues and communicate them to the masses. Journalism definitely affects my writing style. I like short sentences and punchy lines, but more-so, I think accuracy and reliability in storytelling is one of our most important roles as writers. No one needs Fake News… real life is unbelievable enough.

And my writing routine:

My routine is to not have a routine, at least not in hours. I write almost every day, but the hours of when I write vary in that I work around other things, like taking care of our cats, laundry and exercise or appointments or interviews. Some days I don’t write fiction but I’m writing articles for sites like CrimeReads. One thing I almost never do is write in the evening, because I’m brain-fried by that point.

Here’s a link to the full interview, which is on the Constellate Creatives/Constellate Publishing site. While you’re there, if you have a book inside you or your computer that’s waiting to get out, consider clicking a button for more information about Constellate.

Q&A: Authors Keith Roysdon and Jill Blocker

Muncie, Indiana … can you keep a secret?

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Muncie, Indiana – my hometown – has kept some pretty wild secrets over the years, including generations of crime and corruption that’s sent mayors and other prominent people off to jail.

It’s also been the scene of wild pop culture events. Remember Steven Spielberg’s classic “Close Encounters of the Third Kind?” The first half of the movie, where aliens abduct the little boy and Richard Dreyfus builds a mountain in his family room, is set in Muncie.

So with my friend and fellow author Jill Blocker and I planning on book talks and signings July 14 and 15, we’re planning something else … a little hang with the authors.

Hit us up if you want to learn more.

Hey look: A press release about where we’ll be in July

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I’m not sure if you heard or not, but I’ve got a new crime novel, SEVEN ANGELS, out and my longtime friend Jill Blocker has a new novel out, HAPPILY AFTER EVER.

You know I’m kidding, because if you’ve seen me on social media for the past several months, you know these things.

But if you’re in Indiana – both of us are from the Hoosier state – and want to come see us, you can.

Here’s a quick rundown of where both of us will be. Jill will also have events in Seattle, New York City and Zurich after our Hoosier trip. (I’ll link to the Constellate Publishing events page below.)

Anyway:

Authors Roysdon, Blocker plan book talks, signings

Two authors with Muncie, Indiana, ties are releasing new novels and planning on talks and signings in Muncie in July.

Keith Roysdon and Jill Blocker will be speaking and signing books at events July 14 and 15 in Muncie.

The two will be talking about “Seven Angels,” Roysdon’s latest novel, and “Happily After Ever,” Blocker’s new novel.

They’ll be speaking and signing books:

Tuesday, July 14, 6-8 p.m., at the E.B. and Bertha C. Ball Center, 400 W. Minnetrista Blvd., Muncie. The talk is free and open to the public, but the Ball Center requests advance registration to ensure plenty of seating and refreshments.

Earlier Tuesday, at 3 p.m., they’ll be at Ink Drinkers Anonymous Bookstore, 108 S. Walnut Street.

Wednesday, July 15, 6:30 p.m. at Carnegie Library, 301 E. Jackson Street.

Earlier Wednesday, at 3 p.m., they’ll be at Aw Yeah Comics, 119 E. Charles Street.

Also earlier Wednesday, July 15, at noon, they’ll be at the Orchard Shop at Minnetrista, 311 W. St. Joseph St.

Blocker, a native Hoosier, is a Ball State University graduate who worked at The Star Press while she was attending the university. A resident of Switzerland, Blocker is the author of “What Was Beautiful and Good,” an epic but personal account of love and the beginnings of the Dada art movement in the early days of World War I, and her new novel, “Happily After Ever,” the story of a young writer from America who finds love, disappointment and renewed hope as a citizen of the world.

Blocker and her sister are principals of Constellate Creatives, a multi-faceted international company that publishes books (through its Constellate Publishing division) and provides editorial and marketing services for a variety of books, authors and clients. Constellate’s announcement of its 2026 slate of books was widely publicized earlier this year. Constellate also has a studio for recording audiobooks or podcasts.

Roysdon, a resident of Tennessee, was a reporter and editor for 40 years for The Star Press (and its predecessors) in Muncie. He won or co-won more than 30 first-place awards in Indiana and national journalism competitions. He’s the co-author with Douglas Walker of four award-winning true crime books about the Muncie area, including “Wicked Muncie,” “Muncie Murder & Mayhem,” “The Westside Park Murders” and “Cold Case Muncie.” Roysdon’s short fiction, news and pop culture writing has been widely published. His short stories are included in three 2026 anthologies, “Fighting Words,” “Bad Intentions” and “Daydream Believer.”

Roysdon’s first novel, “That October,” was published in 2025. Set in a fictionalized version of Muncie in 1984, the novel is about six high school friends who band together to solve the mystery of a friend’s murder and another’s disappearance. His new novel, “Seven Angels,” is about a young woman who returns to her small Tennessee town to help run the family funeral home. After she’s named county coroner, she must not only solve a murder but battle white supremacists, a pill-pushing doctor, a corrupt sheriff and a ruthless Russian trafficker hunting a young girl from Ukraine.

More about Constellate Publishing and the authors:

Constellate Publishing

Here’s ya favorite authors on public radio!

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New right now on Indiana Public Radio, the Pop of Culture interview with me and Jill Blocker about our new books, our publishing venture and our Muncie appearances in July. Thanks to longtime friend Michelle Kinsey for the chance to talk.

As Michelle points out, she and Jill and I all have a newspaper in common: The three of us formerly worked at The Star Press in Muncie, Indiana.

https://indianapublicradio.org/popofculture

Do the hustle: dancing as fast as we can … maybe

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(And yes, you’re welcome for injecting that 1975 Van McCoy earworm into your brain.)

Every day, I see dudes in our apartment complex walking through the parking lot and down the hill to the busy commercial street below. They’re wearing knit shirts with restaurant logos and I’m assuming they’re going to work in the kitchens of said eateries.

In these hotter-than-the-hinges-on-the-gates-of-hell summer days, they’re walking to work, maybe because they don’t have cars and, luckily, there are so many places to eat nearby.

Increasingly, they’re turning out for work every day at some risk: getting swept up by state-sanctioned kidnappers.

Whatever the risks and whatever the meager rewards – nobody working in a restaurant kitchen is making more than minimum wage – they’re hustling every day.

They’re an echo of their parents and, honestly, my parents. My dad worked for 30 years in an auto parts factory. The days were hot and dirty and noisy; he was half-deaf by the time he retired. And when he retired, he ran pay-to-fish ponds down the hill and behind our house. Once a week he drove to another city, his old Chevy pickup with a waterproofed wooden tank that he built on the back, to pick up catfish and bluegill to stock the ponds. He’d owned and ran an apartment house years before I was born and sharpened saws after he retired.

My mom’s story was similar, and I tell some of it in my upcoming novel GHOST SHOW. She and her sisters gathered wild-growing plants near their little town in Tennessee – the place that inspired the town in my novel SEVEN ANGELS – to sell to reps of pharmaceutical companies. They collected the plants in burlap sacks and sold them, at the end of the day, for pennies.

My mom ran our 20-acre farm for those 30 years my dad worked in the factory. She cleaned houses and factories, a job I helped with before I started working in the newspaper business.

I have only a portion of the hard work, the sheer hustle, of my parents. Or those guys walking to work in a hot kitchen every day.

And I’m acutely aware of that.

“I need to work more and work longer hours if I’m gonna write all these books,” I said the other day.

“You know, you can take downtime,” the reply came.

And I do take down time. Too much of it. I need to work harder and smarter. I need to hustle.