LIVE! #81
7 June 2026
Agenda
- Why We're Here / Roundtable Rules
- Introduction to Literary Forensics
- Group Discussion
- Further Study
Why We're Here
We writers want to improve our craft
by reading like a writer
We learn from each other
using Literary Forensics
Roundtable Rules
Always refer back to the book
Practice active listening & serendipity
Every feeling and observation is valid...
but not every conclusion
Always refer back to the book
Reading Teaches Writing
Meet today's author: S.A. Cosby
- Cosby grew up in a trailer with his mother and brother in Matthews, Virginia, and attended Emmaus Baptist church, which his great-great-grandfather Gabriel, a once-enslaved carpenter, built.
- Frustrated with plot holes in fairy tales, at age 7 Cosby rewrote their endings; in the 6th grade he wrote a 75-page werewolf story so gruesome it earned him a visit to the school psychiatrist.
- Cosby has always been a voracious reader: first his grandmother’s Harlequin romances, his aunt’s Stephen King paperbacks, his uncle’s copies of Chester Himes and Raymond Chandler, and issues of Bronze Thrills, a tabloid for Black readers.
- He dropped out of college to attend to his sick mother, and got a job loading at Lowe’s. One Lowe's customer, affiliated with Hatton Cross Steampunk, published Cosby's first novel, a fantasy/martial arts book titled “Brotherhood of the Blade,” in 2014.
- In 2013 a bellydancer friend of Cosby's met the bartender at Shade in Greenwich Village, who also published Thuglit, a hard-core crime fiction magazine, and she talked up Cosby's work. Soon Cosby was a regular contributor. Cosby met his agent, Josh Getzler, at a Florida crime writing symposium, where Cosby's response to an antebellum apologist so impressed the agent that he bought him a drink.
- Cosby's novels include: My Darkest Prayer (2019), Blacktop Wasteland (2020), Razorblade Tears (2021), and All Sinners Bleed (2023). King of Ashes is first in a multi-$M 3-book deal with Flatiron.
- His “Mount Rushmore” of crime writers is Walter Mosley, Elmore Leonard and Dennis Lehane.
- Cosby lives with his wife Kimberley and their two cats in Shacklefords, a 1/2 hour drive from Matthews. He still sometimes works at his wife's funeral home.
"That's the thing about being a writer; that's your job: is to take somebody's hand and say, 'Come with me. I'm going to show you things maybe you don't even know you need to see.'"
—S. A. Cosby
"You can be poor, but you can educate yourself for free."
—S. A. Cosby
What do you feel?
What in the book elicited that feeling?
Every feeling and observation is valid...
but every conclusion should be questioned
We practice serendipity
- nothing is too crazy
Always refer back to the book
What do you notice?
Writing King of Ashes
- Jefferson Run is based in part on Matthews, VA, but mostly on Petersburg, a city just south of Richmond, VA, and plagued by gang violence as industry left. By 2020, the city of just 33,000 had the highest homicide rate in VA. Stories from a funeral biz colleague there fired Cosby’s imagination, like getting paid with blood-splattered bills, and a victim fed human chitterlings.
- Cosby was inspired by Shakespeare's tragedies Macbeth and Hamlet (impressed that "Shakespeare kills everybody"), the biblical Prodigal Son, and the movies The Godfather, Good Fellas, and Scarface. His cousin is a financial advisor in Atlanta.
- Cosby usually writes that the good guys win; but who are the good guys here? Roman has to decide whether he’d “rule in hell rather than serve in heaven.”
- Cosby hates research ("I've got good copy editors"), and he only writes two drafts ("I got stuff to do").
- These days Cosby writes on a lap desk while sitting in his heated recliner, while his wife watches TV.
Stats & Background
- Marketing: Black & African American Mystery Thriller and Suspense Fiction, Southern United States Literature, Southern Fiction, Organized Crime Thrillers, Murder Thrillers
- Genre: Present-Day Realistic Long-Form Archplot
- Print Pages: 352; Word count: 114,740
Reading Grade: 6th; Avg. wds/sent.: 11.01
Lexical Density: 48.90; Flesch Reading Ease: 80.56 - POV: Roman, Dante, Neveah, various minor characters briefly;
Person: 3rd; Tense: Past (2003/2004 sections: Present) - Publish date: June 10, 2025
- Publisher: Pine & Cedar Books imprint of Flatiron Press
- Audio book length: (13 hours, 19 mins)
- Narrator: Adam Lazarre-White
- Recognition: NY Times bestseller, Time magazine 100 must-read of 2025, Amazon's Best Books of 2025
- Movie option:
- Bidding war won by Netflix, Amblin and Obama-backed Higher Ground
Upcoming meetings
Summer Break
September 6: Tilt - Emma Pattee (USA, 2025)
October 4: Angel Down - Daniel Kraus (USA, 2025)
November 1: The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)
- Rabih Alameddine (USA, 2025)
December 6: What We Can Know - Ian McEwan (UK, 2025)
Latest podcast
S3 E7: Flesh - David Szalay