His humor and short fiction appear in various publications throughout the Southeast.

    From a brutal upbringing and tumultuous life growing up in the 1960s to modern day, Cora Jean's simple heart and strength of character shine through in a story of love, loss and ultimate grace that speaks volumes to us all.

    She yanked us out of the bed and over to the wall. The door flew open. There was a huge explosion! Daddy had fired his shotgun into our bed.Minnie leaves boarding school to spend the summer at The Big House, her cherished Grandpa's home. She enjoys adventure, but she also learns of the dangers posed by the land and a river that can seduce the unwary. The arrival of Minnie's great-grandmother provides her with a fearless female role model, as well as tales of the elderly woman's antebellum past and how she survived the Civil War. She also learns of her Grandpa's struggle to build a post-Civil War cotton and lumber empire in a wilderness of swamps, disease, and treacherous men willing to steal and murder.Minnie's valuable lessons: one must face one's fears head-on, and one must never willingly become a victim. At the close of Summer young Minnie experiences devasting upheaval, but her innate courage allows her to face her fears . . . and to eventually triumph over them.A Gold Medal winner of the 2015 Global eBook Awards, this story is poignant, heartbreaking in turns, and empowering, transporting the reader into the heart and soul of a bygone era. A timeless story, it reflects the very best of the American character when confronting adversity.

    Her only wish is to go home, but in order to do so, she has to find the one light on Brown Mountain that transported her back in time from 1969 to 1859. When Lizzie’s one opportunity is thwarted, she remains trapped in the antebellum South, a time she’s come to loathe, but that’s not the only reason she’s anxious to return home. The Civil War looms ever closer and she is frantic to leave before the deadliest and bloodiest conflict in American history descends on Brown Mountain. Lizzie spends her days helping the Collins sisters doctor the people on Brown Mountain and in the little town of Morganton, North Carolina. While learning about the natural healing methods the sisters’ use, she teaches them the more modern medicine she learned in medical school. But it’s the nights that keep Lizzie going, searching the mountain with her best friend Abbie to find the one light that can take her home and engaging in secret meetings with Josh Hampton, a plantation owner’s son, risking her life as she helps him lead slaves to freedom. As time goes by, Lizzie begins to care deeply for Josh, enough that she questions what she will do if the opportunity to go back to her time ever presents itself. Will she step into the light or will she choose to stay with Josh? She fears that when the time comes, she will only have a split second to make that decision and can only pray it will be the right one.

    He stays at the edge of an outcast community inhabited by eccentrics, criminals and the poverty-stricken. Rising above the physical and human squalor around him, his detachment and wry humour enable him to survive dereliction and destitution with dignity.

    This award-winning novel follows twelve-year-old Steven Moore and his slave companion on a nightmarish journey behind Union lines.

    She knew how. Mildred could breathe the word no to a second cup of ice cream. Could resist drinking too much champagne. But when it came right down to a friend needing a favor, she might say no first, but if someone really needed her—really needed her! —she always said yes. That’s how Mildred ended up with strangers camped out in her spare bedroom, helping her friend Fran to start a new business at the antique emporium, and walking around the empty church with a dust rag in her hand even though she hated to dust. She couldn’t say no to dust for long either. The only real no Mildred had said in recent history was to a man who loved her. Hugh wasn’t the first man to pursue her. But he was the most recent. And she had been flattered but not interested—not in the way he wanted her to be interested. Hugh didn’t give up right away. He lodged himself near her at church. Found her in the church kitchen after a fellowship supper to aid in the clean-up. And finally, her would-be lover had just asked her outright. That was the moment when Mildred had to say no. Until then Millie had been artfully dodging him. Only her best friend Fran understood. Fran said when Mildred finally felt the regretful effects of that no, “We’re all of us such fools.” But they aren’t fools. Mildred Budge and her friends are just people trying to live inside the faith released from heaven through the One who didn’t say no. This is the first novel in the series about Mildred Budge and her friends—just ordinary people trying to live out an extraordinary hope available to anyone who realizes what kind of help he or she really needs. That hope has a name, and Mildred Budge knows it. Need hope? Need a friend. Mildred Budge is a very good friend. If you like spending time with people who are just ordinary but extraordinarily hopeful, then you’ll love this story. Get a copy of this first novel in the series and find out for yourself what church ladies really think. About the author: Daphne Simpkins is an Alabama writer who writes about a variety of subjects and often on the secret lives of church ladies. Befriend her on Facebook, Twitter, or Linkedin.com.

    Contents:Sullivan's IslandPlantationIsle of Palms

    When her father, Calvin, telephones out of the blue one evening and says he’s coming home for Thanksgiving, Angel thinks her dream of having a normal family is finally going to come true. Instead, she finds herself at the center of a dangerous scenario, threatened by secrets far beyond her understanding.Set in a small Appalachian town in the early 1970’s, Angel is the compelling story of an innocent girl as the unwitting link between the two generations of her family’s dark and unresolved past.

    Each Ivy woman has been blessed with the gift of Knowing, but it's eighteen-year-old Tessa and her unique powers that cause folks to raise their eyebrows. When Rev. Renfrow and his son, Sterling, roll into town with their Airstream trailer and special brand of faith, things will never be the same, as a tragic secret is uncovered and the Ivy women learn the true meaning of kinship and hope.

    Released under mysterious circumstances, Larkin moves to Covington, South Carolina, to begin a new, peaceful life. His newfound isolation is shattered when undercover federal agent Karen Chaney comes to town as part of a drug sting operation. Together they face an entrenched society willing to look the other way when crime pays and a group of high-profile conspirators ready to kill to make sure it does. But who is Judge Thornton Hunnycut from Louisiana, the man who circumvented the law to incarcerate Larkin years ago? And what now are his true goals, as he sets his sights on the ultimate political office? This special edition paperback contains the lead-off chapter from LOUISIANA BURN, the follow-up to

    In 'The Cherry Pit', Clifford Stone - quixotic curator of arcane Americana at a Boston antiques foundation and a cataloguer of a 'vanished American past' - forsakes Boston and his icy wife to return to his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas, and a life that is both instantly familiar and disturbingly strange.

    There is a trial in the town, a triangle of animosities. A Jewish merchant murdered, a black man accused and a white populace primed for a hanging. A reporter from New York assigned to cover a story which would seem to be a fait accompli. The outsider's view of Charleston just after the turn of the century, still clinging to a cultural past and caught in the racial realities of the time, brings a Menckenesque perspective to a plot that is anything but a simple tale of racial wrongdoing."--Publisher marketing.

    But when her older brother Mac becomes the main suspect, Savannah launches a secret investigation in order to clear her brother’s name. Savannah has inherited a gift, one that might reveal who the culprit is if she can stay one step ahead of the killer, who is closer than she thinks.

    Or so she thinks, until Leona Lane, the older seamstress who sat by her side at the local shirt factory where both women worked as collar makers, insists Emmalee come and live with her.  Just as Emmalee prepares to escape her hardscrabble life in Red Chert holler, Leona dies tragically.  Grief-stricken, Emmalee decides she’ll make Leona’s burying dress, but there are plenty of people who don't think the unmarried Emmalee should design a dress for a Christian woman - or care for a child on her own. But with every stitch, Emmalee struggles to do what is right for her daughter and to honor Leona the best way she can, finding unlikely support among an indomitable group of seamstresses and the town’s funeral director. In a moving tale exploring Southern spirit and camaraderie among working women, a young mother will compel a town to become a community.Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content