Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.

We wasn't born to be all the time scared, we was born happy.

In this uncertain space between birth and death, especially here at the end of the world in Moonlight Bay, we need hope as surely as we need food and water, love and friendship.

We are an arrogant species, full of terrible potential, but we also have a great capacity for love, friendship, generosity, kindness, faith, hope, and joy.

Hope, however, isn't all that's needed to achieve change. Hope is a hand extended, but two hands are required to be pulled out of this deep hole. The second hand was faith.

Southerners have many fine qualities, charm and civility among them, and a sense of the tragic.

A fine line separates the weary recluse from the fearful hermit. Finer still is the line between hermit and bitter misanthrope.