This morning I woke up smack dab in the middle of an anxiety attack. It started before I even opened my eyes. I could already hear him, Ole Mr. Nasty running his mouth, listing every errand I hadn’t run, appointment I hadn’t made, dream I hadn’t realized before 2024 was done.

You know him. Mr. Ole Nasty. The voice that’s never satisfied. The one that greets you at dawn like a bill collector. You didn’t finish that. You said you’d do this. Remember that book idea from three years ago? Still waiting.

Never mind the book I polished and released last summer. The other three manuscripts I finally finished over the course of last fall. Nope. Nope. None of them counted.

According to Ole Mr. Nasty, only what I hadn’t done counted. Anything I had didn’t.

So I lay there in the dark and fought to give in. Yup. That’s right. I wanted to give in, give up. Figured it would be easier. But I couldn’t. Mama was the daughter of a sharecropper. Daddy was the son of a coal miner. Folks who didn’t have it in them to quit.

Turns out, I don’t either.

These days before New Year’s Eve? That’s when people get restless and brave. They review their lives like evidence and look at the year ahead like an escape route. Hope’s dangerous. So is regret.

Marion stood at her kitchen island arranging cheese cubes while her twenty-pound honey-glazed ham turned to carbon at 425F degrees. She'd been standing there for eighteen minutes now, watching it through the oven door like television. Like meditation. Like prayer.

The first review was lovely. Detailed, thoughtful, generous. Very reassuring. Made me feel good, real good. All tingly inside.

Then I hit the second one.

Or should I say it hit me?

Meet Catherine Tucker, author of Tall Cotton—a blistering tale of race, justice, and survival in 1970 Mississippi. A boy fighting for his mother. A lawyer facing his own demons. A town steeped in secrets. Our conversation goes deep into what drives a writer to walk that road.

Winter nights hold secrets differently. The cold makes people honest, or desperate, or both. Loneliness sharpens. Old grudges thaw. And every memory somebody tried to bury claws its way to the surface in time to wish them a merry Christmas.

Every year around this time, some poor bird somewhere makes the news for escaping its fate. Usually it’s a farm upstate, sometimes a backyard coop in Queens. There’s always a photo — the turkey darting across a road, feathers flying, looking both ridiculous and determined. And for a moment, we all root for it. The great escapee. Can’t say I blame him. Some years, we all want to escape Thanksgiving.

Twenty-five years ago, I published a book called Harlem Redux, about a 1920s New York civil rights attorney who returns from the dead to investigate his sister’s supposed suicide—and finds a viper’s den of family secrets, betrayal, and long-buried lies. The story follows his search for truth through the wreckage of love and loyalty.

Harlem Redux didn’t arrive in this world the way books usually do. It didn’t stroll in with an agent and a tidy contract and a marketing plan. No, that book crept in sideways, same as trouble, same as a blessing you don’t recognize till years later.

When Every Day Is Halloween

You know what they don’t tell you about Halloween? It’s amateur night for the real ghouls.

While the rest of the world paints their faces and pretends for a few hours, there are folks who never take off their masks. You’ve met them. They’re serving you apple pie with smiles that don’t reach their eyes. Signing contracts with that have done deeds dark enough to shame the devil. Walking through suburban doors each evening to kiss families who don’t know they’re living with strangers.

For some folks, Halloween’s not a holiday. It’s a lifestyle. A habit. The year-round business of keeping up appearances while something cold and hollow walks around wearing a pretty face.