Some of the first readings I ever did were with writer Todd Dills, who was and is one of the most engaging people to see read from their work in front of their audience. (I still have fond memories of watching Todd shaking an upside-down mic stand at an event at an Atlanta coffee shop.) The guy’s a fantastic writer as well, and when his latest novel Shining Man was published in 2019 — it’s a followup to his earlier Sons of the Rapture, which I also highly recommend — I eagerly read it and sent him some questions on it. And then the pandemic happened and the interview was paused for a bit. And now it’s complete — and features Dills discussing everything from the literary influence of Ralph Ellison to the role NASCAR plays in his work.
![Eclipse drawing from "Fourteen Weeks in Descriptive Astronomy" by J. Dorman Steele, 1873 (Barnes and Co., NY). During this eclipse, Francis Baily noticed bright flashes of light from around the limb of the moon, later named 'Baily’s Beads’ in his honor. [www.sunearthday.nasa.gov]](http://www.vol1brooklyn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/eclipse.jpg)