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Growing up in the small community of Bethesda, N.C., just outside of Durham, Clyde Edgerton thought every child had 23 aunts and uncles who talked a lot. As a boy, he didn't realize the family stories he heard, and the conversations he overheard, would form a well for his fiction. In fact, an actual well beneath the kitchen floor of his home in the late ‘70s would be his diving board into an acclaimed and award-winning career that has spanned more than 30 years and produced nine novels, which include "Raney," "Walking Across Egypt," "Lunch at the Piccadilly," and his most recent, "The Bible Salesman."

Before ever contemplating a life as a writer, Edgerton wanted to be an English teacher. In high school and college, he was captivated by the works of Emerson, Thoreau, Twain, and Hemingway. A student in the U.S. Air Force ROTC program, he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1966 with a commission and spent the next five years as a combat pilot in the United States and Southeast Asia. Following his service in the military, he returned to North Carolina, earned his master's degree, followed by a doctorate, and began his career in education (his first teaching job was at his old high school). Today, Edgerton, 64, teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.

As the 2009 Frederick Reads featured author, Edgerton will bring his wit and humor to Maryland on April 23 with appearances at Frederick Community College, Hood College, and the Weinberg Center for the Arts (all free to the public).

In addition to his literary talents, Edgerton is also a musician and will be joined at the Weinberg Center by his folk band, The Rank Strangers, for an evening of stories and live music, which will include a portion of the musical adaptation "The Bible Salesman."

What led you into writing?

I had some time on my hands when I was in my early 30s, and I wrote a short story and that was very satisfying to me. It was as if I hadn't been able to quite admit that I wanted to be a writer all along. Once I discovered Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor, I recognized that I had all kinds of material from my growing up to write about. The spur for my first short story was a soft spot in the kitchen floor where I lived and crawled under the house and found an open well under the soft spot and thought how funny it would be if somebody fell down through the floor into the well. That was my first story and ended up in my third novel ("The Floatplane Notebooks").

Do you approach each novel the same way or is each one a different beast?

Each one is like a child. They've all got two arms and two legs but it gets pretty different after that. They all have different temperaments, different problems, and create different little concerns. My novels have all been that way. I'll try to do something that works for the last one and it won't and I'll run into a wall. I think it's because you are following the story and each story demands a kind of structure and a kind of telling and the options are many. I didn't know anything about point of view when I started writing. I wrote "Raney," my first novel, from first person point of view, which is very convenient and fun and often worthy but since then none of my stories have seemed to fit one person telling them and therefore the options of how to tell a story in terms of point of view are so varied.

In your novels, you have a great knack for pairing opposites together—Raney and her husband Charles, Clearwater and Henry in "The Bible Salesman." Is this intentional?

I would have to say it's instinct. I never thought about it beforehand. I might now, on my next novel, since you planted that idea in my head. It would be a good way to get conflict but I think I see humor as the pay-off. I did certainly with Raney and Charles — I saw the potential for humor and I put them together. Those clashes are interesting to me and it's fun to watch things happen.

What advice do you give your students?

My first advice is never follow any advice that doesn't make sense. I think there are people who have opinions about writing who can be very misleading and wrong. Young people who are impressionable may take their advice in terms of anything—structure or what to write about or what not to write about—take that advice to heart simply because of the status of the advisor rather than what they believe in their heart is true and right. Fiction writers are unique and we need new approaches. So my advice is always to follow no advice that doesn't make sense to you—the writer. My second thing is to keep it simple and clear—clarity, accuracy, conciseness. I think you can take those three words and apply them to any piece of writing.

Your most recent novel, "The Bible Salesman," originated as a short story paying tribute to Flannery O'Connor, correct?

Tom Franklin, a Mississippi writer, and William Gay, a Tennessee writer — two really fine writers — were or are in the process [of putting together an anthology] in which writers pay tribute to Flannery O'Connor with a story. When they called me, I immediately thought of my two favorite characters from Flannery O'Connor—two of my favorite in all of literature — which are the Bible Salesman ("Good Country People") and the Misfit ("A Good Man is Hard to Find"). I said, ‘I'm going to write a story in which I have a bible salesman and a misfit but they won't be the same as hers; they'll be mine.' So I did and it was so much fun I said, ‘I'm going to keep going.'

It reads like it was written by someone who was having a good time.

Yeah, I usually enjoy it a lot. It's the in-between, you know, the transitions and the stage directions that are not any fun. But the scenes, when the action is going on and people are talking to each other, I get a kick out of that.

Can you tell me about "The Bible Salesman, the Musical?"

We'll do a portion of that up in Maryland. It's a condensation, in a way, of the novel. It's a rewrite of the novel. My buddy Mike Craver, who is quite a musician, he put together some music. We put it together and it's just a lot of fun. I'm excited about doing it up there.

What can folks in Frederick expect when they come out on April 23?

For the show, we'll do probably a couple of fun songs. I might tell a very short, funny story or two and then we'll launch into a sequence or two from "The Bible Salesman" (the musical). That should be, I hope, very entertaining. All my professional writing life I have done music and readings. I've never had a reading that I didn't do music with a band or by myself. Finally, after all those years, I fused those two together into a program in which the music and the readings fit together. It's some of the best parts of "The Bible Salesman" rewritten, and sometimes verbatim, with a lot of new music that Mike has written and some old timey music too.

The subject of religion and faith—devotion and the questioning of religion and faith—is prevalent in many of your novels. Tell me about how your own upbringing as a fundamentalist Christian influenced your writing.

You know, there was a passion from the pulpit in my upbringing. Those sermons, I think in some ways I long for that passion about any subject. I kind of miss that. There was a kind of a simple loyalty of all the people in that little community which was a consequence of economics. There were no rich people. There was one leader and that was the preacher of the community. In many ways it was kind of idealistic. It was based on that whole small farm concept. So it all gets mixed together in one package—the passion, the loyalty. And then there is, of course, the ideology and theology that are connected to it, which I've learned not to quibble over but to just find my own faith and try to live it for the limited time that I have.

Do you still attend church?

No, except for the church that my wife and I and my children have created that we have many Sundays, which is just a matter of being in nature and saying what we are thankful for and singing an old hymn and naming a bird.

Does the label "Southern Writer" mean anything to you?

It doesn't bother me at all. I'm very happy with my company. I mean, when I think about Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty and Faulkner and these other people, I'm very happy to be called what they're called. As long as it's not a bad writer, I don't mind what it is. We're all mostly regional writers. Shakespeare was very much a regional writer, so it doesn't bother me to be a regional writer. I think I just didn't have any choice, and I hope there are universal kinds of themes that go beneath the surface of the South that other people pick up on.

As you get older, do you feel that writing comes easier or is it more difficult?

It doesn't come any easier. Wish it did. That would be the easy answer. Each novel is a problem. I think there are probably twenty various kinds of wildernesses in the world. It's like being parachuted into a wilderness and you got to get out. It can be interesting. Just when you've figured out the last wilderness, they pick you up and put you in another one. For some reason, no two wildernesses, so far, have been alike.

"'The Bible Salesman' author Clyde Edgerton

Presented by Frederick Reads

Thursday, April 23

11 a.m. Frederick Community College's Jack B. Kussmaul Theater, 7932 Opossumtown Pike, Frederick

Edgerton will discuss his work with students and the general public followed by a question-and-answer session.

3:30 p.m. Hood College, Hodson Auditorium, Rosenstock Hall, 401 Rosemont Ave., Frederick

Sheilah Kast, host of WYPR FM 88.1's "Maryland Morning," will interview Edgerton.

8 p.m. The Weinberg Center for the Arts, 20 W. Patrick St., Frederick

For the Frederick Reads finale, Edgerton will be joined on-stage by his band, The Rank Strangers, for an evening of Americana music and literature. Doors open at 7 p.m. The public is invited to enjoy purchased food and beverage from the bar while listening to the music of The Wayfarers in the lobby before Edgerton takes the stage at 8 pm.

Seating is first-come, first-served at each location. Books will be available for sale and signing at all three events.

For more information, call 301-600-1630. Visit www.fcpl.org. Visit www.clydeedgerton.com.

Writer and performer Jason Tinney was born in Frederick, Maryland. His first book, "Louise Paris and Other Waltzes," (poetry/prose) was published in 2002. "Bluebird" (short stories and poems) was published in 2003. Tinney will perform with his band, The Wayfarers, before Clyde Edgerton takes the stage at the Weinberg Center on April 23. The public is welcome to enjoy the Wayfarers Frederick Reads pre-show in the Weinberg Center lobby from 7-8 p.m.

Read Jason Tinney's interview with Clyde Edgerton in its entirety at www.fcpl.org.