I'm R.E. Chatterton, an author and storyteller based in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
My first book, Good Slave: A Memoir of Faith, Control, and Freedom, began with a simple idea: tell the truth about my life.
That turned out to be considerably less simple than it sounded.
“I spent most of my life learning how to be who I thought I was supposed to be. Writing is where I learned how to be myself.”
I grew up in North Carolina as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, in a world where faith shaped nearly everything—family, friendships, marriage, expectations, and even the way I understood myself. My life took some extraordinary turns along the way, including surviving a devastating accident as a child, experiencing profound loss, walking through addiction and its consequences, and eventually leaving behind the belief system that had defined most of my life.
For years, I thought the goal was to become better at being what other people needed me to be.
Eventually, I started asking a different question:
Who am I when nobody else gets to answer that for me?
That question became Good Slave.
But something unexpected happened after I finished telling the story of where I'd been.
I discovered how much I loved creating stories about places I'd never been at all.
FROM MEMORY TO MYSTERY
Today, my writing moves between two very different worlds.
I write nonfiction about identity, belief, family, resilience, and the complicated business of becoming yourself.
And I write fiction.
My current fiction project is The Briar Glen Mysteries, an Appalachian noir series set in a fictional North Carolina mountain town of my own creation. Briar Glen has a police department, a courthouse, a hospital, a chicken restaurant, a barber shop, old families, new grudges—and more than a few things its residents would prefer nobody started asking questions about.
I've fallen completely in love with the place.
Readers can already visit Briar Glen through the original short stories published here, while I continue developing the first novel in the series.
Original artwork created for R.E.’s latest short story The Last Haircut at Rayburn’s
WHY I WRITE
I don't think I'm particularly interested in perfect people.
I'm interested in complicated ones.
People who make terrible decisions for understandable reasons. People who love each other and hurt each other. People who believe things until they don't. People who survive things they shouldn't have had to survive. People who are funny at inappropriate times. People who screw up, start over, and occasionally surprise themselves.
Whether I'm writing memoir or mystery, that's probably the thread running through all of it:
I'm interested in what makes people become who they are.
Sometimes I find those answers by looking backward.
Sometimes I have to invent an entire town.
A LITTLE MORE ABOUT ME
When I'm not writing, I'm usually creating something else.
Photography has been part of my life for years, and I'm rarely far from a camera. I love the mountains, old buildings, small-town places with stories attached to them, and noticing details other people might walk past.
I also founded Lou Dog Studio, my independent creative studio, named for my Boston Terrier, Louie. It's the home for the publishing, production, and creative projects that grow beyond my work as an individual author.
I live in Western North Carolina, where there is no shortage of mountains, characters, strange little roads, local legends, or inspiration.
And these days, I'm building a life that looks considerably different from the one I once imagined.
I like this life better.
LET'S STAY IN TOUCH
Want to talk books, invite me to an event, ask about an author appearance, or just say hello?
I'd love to hear from you.