Sports Illustrated series on McNair murder gives air to charge that Metro botched the investigation It had all the elements of a Hollywood script or a best-selling whodunit, but the shocking 2009 Fourth of July murder of legendary Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair was – horribly – all too real. The Nashville police department took just four days to close the case. At a July Continue reading →

Of Bookworms and Bibliophiles  This weekend marks the 30th annual celebration — the Diamond Anniversary — of the written word in downtown Nashville. The Southern Festival of Books is one of the South’s premier events for book-lovers, but this is a special one. The fun begins Friday morning at War Memorial Plaza and the downtown main branch of Nashville Public Library and concludes late Sunday afternoon. Continue reading →

Fall is Here … But It Sure Didn’t Feel Like It! How hot is it? It’s so hot that … That was a regular bit on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson, and I still remember many of the zingers and one-liners. But what we experienced this past weekend at Fall Fest at the Hermitage was no laughing matter. I spent the weekend outside on the Continue reading →

‘You can feel it in the air around here’ By TOM WOOD Donelson has always had its share of friendly neighborhood restaurants that served up good food and conversation. But if you wanted to go someplace hip, hot or happening, that meant driving across town to one of Nashville’s trendier areas like East Nashville, Germantown, The Gulch, 12South or The Nations. That’s no longer the Continue reading →

Visiting the Ghosts of Dutchman’s Curve The Nashvile Ledger, a weekly newspaper here in Music City, recently asked me to write a piece on the 100th anniversary of the deadliest train crash in U.S. history, which occurred on the morning of July 9, 1918 when two steam locomotives met head-on and derailed in a cornfield near Richland Creek Greenway at White Bridge Road. You can read Continue reading →

Here’s my complete June 29, 2018 article in the Nashville Ledger. Thanks for reading! —————— By Tom Wood  Standing out here in the freshly-mown grasses of Richland Park Greenway, several yards from the Dutchman’s Curve Train Wreck historical marker placed alongside White Bridge Road, I listen for ethereal echoes of the past. This is as much a ghost story as it is a history lesson. Continue reading →

Here’s my complete June 29, 2018 article in the Tennessee Ledger. Thanks for reading! —————— By Tom Wood The Super Bowl is coming to Knoxville! Actually, it’s “the Super Bowl of Bass Fishing” – an important distinction, to be sure. But the widely accepted comparison aptly describes the impact that next spring’s bass fishing national championship is expected to have on the area. The 49th GEICO Continue reading →

Fistful of Rain (2018) By Baron R. Birtcher 288 pp. The Permanent Press, $29.95 cloth Full disclosure: I first meet Baron R. Birtcher at the 2016 Killer Nashville writers convention in Franklin, Tennessee. We had both been attending for years, and Baron’s book Rain Dogs (2013) was nominated for the conference’s annual Claymore and Silver Falchion Awards, while Hard Latitudes (2015) won the Silver Falchion Award in Continue reading →

My ‘Nashville’ family reflects as series ends A PERSONAL NOTE: This headline on this article is still good, but the content below first appeared here in May 2016. As I write from my den, it is 8:00 p.m., on Sunday, April 8, 2018. In about 12 hours – my call time in 9:18 a.m. – I will be reporting for the final day of taping Continue reading →

Hope we see you at Wizard World Comic Con Growing up, I was more of a DC guy than a Marvel Comics fan. My love for reading began with the thrilling exploits of Superman, Batman, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, The Flash … The Justice League. I can admit now that Clark Kent working for the Daily Planet got me hooked on newspapers at an early Continue reading →