“The Elvis Tooth” is a novel, set in Black Mountain, North Carolina, in which a tourist is inexplicably sent from 2013 to 1948. He desperately wants to get back as he is due to get married in a few days and he thinks it might be awkward if he didn’t show up. He works his way back and along the way discovers some truths about the past, the present and the value of nostalgia.
So, how did I come up wit this idea?
Three things drove me to write this book. (All my art is created out of a desire to get an insistent idea out of my head. Some ideas won’t go away – I have to write or draw them out.)
First, a crazy little clock store that has literal piles of clocks in it. It seems like a sort of elephant’s graveyard for clocks. The name: Pellom’s Time Shop, has all sorts of nuances that set my mind a play.
Second, the old dance hall above the hardware store where I worked. No one was sure what had gone on there, but it was certainly a secret side of the is little Norman Rockwell town. As I went up and down the stairs, I composed the beginning of the story that became “The Elvis Tooth.”
And third, the stories I had gathered doing oral history for the town. We put a lot of them in plays, but some we didn’t and some were too good not to use again.
And fifth, the title; I thought that was a great title for a book. Finding myself this deep in the story, I had to write myself out of it!