Home Sweet Home ...

Like all small towns, Century is the place every kid promises he’ll leave at the first opportunity and never go back. It’s also the kind of place that doesn’t let go of you that easily.

"I guess I’m saying Century haunts me. Now I’m haunting it back," says author Tony Simmons.

Simmons is the assistant managing editor for news at The News Herald in Panama City, FL, where he writes a weekly column and oversees the newsroom. Welcome to the Dawning of a New Century, his first literary novel, departs wildly from his day job as it revisits some of the themes and characters introduced in his short fiction, some of which has appeared in regional anthologies from Pottersville Press.

"Secrets will get out, and in the process they can take on a life of their own — especially in small towns," Simmons says. "Secrets are the seeds of revelations, and revelations lead to transformative experiences. And that’s about as close to a whack upside the head by God’s holy two-by-four as you might find even in Century First Baptist Church."

Thus we find ourselves in Century at the end of the 20th century and the dawn of the 21st — the eve of celebrating its centennial in the first week of April 2001. There’s a parade to plan, and a murder to plot. There’s a marriage to save and one to let go, loves blossoming and lives rotting on the vine.

Caught in the midst are the regular folks of Century with their everyday world-shattering problems. Folks like Mary Anne, who crochets beside her grandmother’s deathbed and weaves new cosmologies; Gil, the high school science teacher whose visions of possible futures have fled, leaving him nothing but empty facts; Simone, whose columns for the local newspaper explore her love/hate relationship with where she’s from and whom she has become.

"This is fiction, but I’d like to think these characters are no less real for all that," Simmons says. "You know people just like them. In fact, there are going to be folks in Century who will think I’ve written their stories here. That’s not the case — even though, certainly, the townsfolk make the town. I just hope they make readers feel welcome."

Welcome to the Dawning of a New Century will be released in hardcover from Pottersville Press, a regional publisher based in Panama City, in September 2005.

About the Author

Tony Simmons is a Florida boy. He’s the assistant managing editor for news at The News Herald in Panama City, where he lives with his wife, Debra, and their children, Nathaniel and Jessica. He was born and raised in Century, and graduated from Century High School in 1982, sixth in a class of 60. He has degrees in television production and print journalism from, respectively, Pensacola Junior College and the University of West Florida, both located in Pensacola.

He has won numerous awards for his newspaper work, including recognitions by the Florida School Boards Association, Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, Florida Press Club, Florida Department of Education, the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution, and the National Society of Newspaper Design.

His short fiction has appeared in the anthologies, Postcards from Pottersville, volumes one and two, and has received honorable mention in the L.Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest.

A Web log (or "blog") about his debut literary novel, Welcome to the Dawning of a New Century — including insight about his inspirations and steps the work followed between the writing and publication process — is on the Web at http://dawningofanewcentury.blogspot.com

When he’s not writing, Tony listens to music, reads books and watches movies — but then, that’s what he does while he’s writing, too. He listened to albums by Tori Amos, David Bowie, Dave Matthews and Sarah McLachlan while working on the Century manuscript. During that time, he also read books by Rick Moody, John Dufresne, Neil Gaiman, Audrey Niffenegger, Bill Bryson, Michael Lister, and others.

He drinks too much coffee.