We are pleased as punch to welcome Southern Fiction writer Buck Turner to Novels Alive to give his readers an insight into his writing process.
What drives your story forward in your books the most, the characters or the plot, or do you feel they are intertwined?
Characters and plot are inextricable. Characters propel plot, and plot is what makes characters real. So, for me, it is both because it is impossible to separate them.
If you were a character in one of your books, which would you be? The protagonist, mentor, villain, love interest, etc.?
I see myself as more of a mentor, because the mentor is always half in and half out of the story. He/she gets to be wise without having to stick around for the consequences.
If you had the power to make any of your books into a film, which would it be and why?
It’s a close call between two books—The Keeper of Stars and The Long Road Back to You—but I’d have to go with The Long Road Back to You. Two reasons: it was the first real love story I ever wrote, the one that made me believe I could actually do this, and on top of that, I just think it’s a genuinely unusual story that keeps you guessing until the very end.
Is there a particular genre of fiction that you have always wanted to write, but haven’t yet tackled?
I’ve always wanted to write something provocative, maybe even controversial, but not in a headline-chasing way. More in the sense of writing something that makes people deeply uncomfortable or makes them examine the things they believe are most fixed and unchangeable.
If you could meet a literary character or author, who would you most like to meet?
Mark Twain. A man who was as much a performance artist as a novelist. A man who, in photos, always looked a bit out of place, as though he’d slipped the handcuffs of time and been deposited in the wrong century. I’d like to see if he talked the way he wrote, and if his voice sounded like someone continually fighting a cough, as I’ve always imagined.
As with the rest of us, you have a real life to live. So, in your most recent book, what was happening in your life, and how did it influence your writing?
I wish I could tell you that during the writing of Unspooling Honey there was some great personal transformation or monumental change in my real life, but actually it came during a solid time of contentment. If anything, the book was shaped by the lack of drama, which actually gave me the freedom to focus more on the writing than anything happening in my life.
Was there something in your first edit that didn’t make it in the final copy that you sometimes wish you would have kept?
Not from the first edit, no. But there are things I think of only after the book is already out in the world—ideas that arrive too late, the way the best ideas always do.
What do you do to prepare your mind to write? To get into the mind of your characters.
My process starts with images. A scene doesn’t exist for me until I can see it—the angle of light coming through a window, the way a character’s mouth moves just before they say something they’ll regret, the specific color a sky turns in the last few minutes before dark. The writing comes after. The seeing comes first.
What book as a child/adolescent most influenced you as a writer?
A few come to mind immediately—Animal Farm, 1984, anything by Edgar Allan Poe or Robert Louis Stevenson. None of them are love stories, not even close, but that was never the point. What they gave me was something harder to name—the understanding that a sentence, if you get it exactly right, can lodge itself somewhere in the body and stay there.
How much research went into your last book?
Believe it or not, it’s always less than you think. It probably should be more, and would be, if I could stand the boredom of fact-checking. But part of me believes in letting the subconscious do the heavy lifting, letting it rest on the foundation of what I already know until it gives me something that sounds real, or at least feels true enough to the reader.
What’s one of the most important things you’d like your readers to know about you? What defines you most as an author?
I’d like my readers to know that I’m not interested in writing to the moment. Trends move fast and then they’re gone, and I don’t want to write something that goes with them. What I’m after is the kind of story that still has a pulse ten, twenty years from now—where you can open it to any page and the sentences are still alive.
Can you tell us what prompted you to write your latest release?
Unspooling Honey grew out of my years in upper East Tennessee, where I went to school at Lincoln Memorial University. The Appalachian region does something to you if you let it—the people, the landscape, the magic that permeates the air. This story is an homage to the spell that place put on me, and all the years I’ve carried it around since.
What’s next for you? What are you working on now?
Several things at once, as usual. Until the Last Star Falls, the fourth and final book in The Keeper of Stars series. The Night Train, a young adult mystery. Across the Velvet Sea, the first book in the When Stars Collide series, which spins off from The Keeper of Stars . And Copper Lions, my latest love story. I can’t say much about them yet, but the characters have already made themselves at home in my head, and they’re not the quiet kind.
Thank you so much for joining us! We look forward to reading more of your intriguing books!
Publication Date: July 14, 2026
Two wounded hearts, scarred by loss and past pain, find unexpected hope and the chance to love again in a quiet East Tennessee town.
A poignant love story about two people who think their wounds are too deep to heal, until a random act of kindness changes their lives forever.
Nick Sullivan used to believe in happily ever after, but that was before he lost his wife and daughter in a car accident. Five years later, the thirty-eight-year-old widower lives a quiet life in the East Tennessee mountains where he spends his days harvesting honey and nights battling the ghosts of his past.
Across town, Dr. Eve Gentry has just started as a professor of English at Lincoln Memorial University. After a recent divorce, Eve is eager for a fresh start and the opportunity to prove that she can make it on her own.
Ready to put down roots, Eve searches for a place she can call home. When a mysterious flyer lands in her faculty mailbox, it leads her to a property that appears too good to be true.
Soon, Nick and Eve become neighbors. As the seasons change, something shifts between the two. Nick, once withdrawn and hardened by the cruelty of fate, starts to soften under Eve’s gentle persistence. Meanwhile, the woman who once vowed never to depend on anyone again, finds herself gradually letting down her guard.
Their wounds run deep, but can they find something beautiful amidst their shared sorrow, building a bridge between their hearts along the way
Buck is a beloved storyteller, best known for his diverse writing style and subject matter. Author of the bestselling romance novels The Long Road Back To You and I’ll Wait, Buck explores both the pleasure and the pain that come with finding that once-in-a-lifetime love, and the lengths we’ll go to keep it.
As a graduate of Lincoln Memorial University, Buck holds a Fine Arts degree as well as an MBA. Having spent his childhood in East Tennessee, Buck focuses on what he knows best-the south, including its rich traditions, diverse characters, and religion. When he’s not busy writing, Buck enjoys spending time with his family, playing golf, fishing, drawing, and painting.
